Safety passports: ‘Not all they seem’
June 1st 2007 The BSIF believes that because Site Safety Passports are based on a ‘qualification’ rather than an ‘accreditation’ principle there is often a serious lack of competence which contributes to incidents and injuries.
A point in time assessment against indistinct pass/fail criteria is no substitute for a regular assessment of a person's ability to apply the necessary skills. "In fact it is worse than this since it is now ‘politically incorrect’ to include pass/fail criteria or assessment principles within ‘qualification’ standards, eg NVQ standards. We have been advised this by several awarding bodies," says a BSIF Spokesman.
The BSIF has been working with other organisations, initially to assist the generation of a generic competence standard for safety professionals. The reason for this approach is to be able use this standard to verify that an individual is ‘competent’ to perform. If this is used within a ‘CORGI’ type system which inspects the ability of a safety professional to do the job, not just satisfy an examiner on the day that their knowledge and understanding is adequate, a major hurdle will be overcome.
Unfortunately, there are other issues which need to be resolved before we can have a transparent system of verification that safety professionals and other workers can justify holding a safety-passport. When these passports are granted by those who deliver the training and the CPD relevance is administered by an organisation which benefits from membership fees, it is apparent that the whole system is riddled with adverse vested-interests. These pressures contribute to a mistaken belief that occupational safety is being properly addressed. From this perspective, the creation of a ‘CORGI’ type scheme for safety professionals, regulated by an organisation such as UKAS, would be far more effective, current and transparent.
Unfortunately, such a mechanism is not available through the ‘qualification’ structure because it is not set up to deliver such a scheme. More articles from BSIF Enterprise: | 
