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Errol Taylor (left) Managing Director of RoSPA presents Simon Shaw (right) of Skanska FS with Best Practice Recognition

Skanska Facilities Services have been recognised by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) as having made a significant contribution to setting best practice in the field of contractor health and safety management.   RoSPA said: “It is vital for contractors to be managed effectively by companies, and it can be a challenge for SMEs to manage them in their own right. Large firms need to lead the way in this field, and Skanska FS has been a shining example.”

This best practice has been achieved by working closely with Human Focus to implement the contractor management service called Competent Contractor.   Over the last 4 years this has involved:

• An enhanced contractor assessment process that extends to checking the competency of each individual worker. More than 1,100 contractor companies have undertaken this new assessment which has involved analysing the training records of more than 10,000 workers. Training gaps were identified and improvement action plans have been agreed. These contractors are now being supported in ongoing improvement work
• Providing RoSPA-accredited training to contractors via a web-based e-learning system. The Core Criteria e-Learning Kit (formerly the Growing Business Kit) was made available for a small fee to workers identified as having gaps in their health and safety training. The video-based training covers a wide range of contractor tasks such as working at height, hot works and confined space entry. These bite-sized online training programmes mean that employees receive training in the areas where it is most required, in the most cost-effective manner
• The introduction of smart card training passports which are used to log each worker in and out of more than 60 sites around the UK. The cards, which are embedded with an electronically-readable chip, are not issued until the worker has undertaken the relevant training. Cards are linked to an online program holding training records for each worker.

Simon Shaw, Skanska-Facilities health & safety manager said “we are delighted to receive this RoSPA best practice recognition.  This initiative is a key aspect of our contractor management system and is helping us to assess the competency of each contractor employee as well as providing our contractors with practical support”.  We also hope that it will help industry best practice in this area move forward”

1.    What training has an employee  received? This sounds obvious – but it’s often an administrative headache to simply collate and make sense of a wide range of safety certificates for each worker.  For many employers this is a major administrative burden.

2.     Is the training recognised / of a reasonable standard? There are literally tens of thousands of health and safety training courses provided by an unregulated market.  Quality standards vary significantly.

3.     Is the training current? Most course have an expiry date and will have to be repeated at anything between 1 and 5 years intervals – if you have lots of pieces of paper in a filing cabinet who is keeping an eye on when qualifications have expired

4.      What does the training cover? Even if the course is reputable – it is often difficult to judge it’s content and extent – for example there is a big difference between a course that last 1 hour as opposed to 3 weeks.

5.      What training do you need to provide? Even if all the certificates are available and it’s clear what the courses cover, employers must still judge if the training fits task in hand. Again – this is an administrative headache that is both costly and time-consuming

The new Human Focus safety training on line tool provides the following features – it:

1. Stores training records (from any source or provider) for each employee in a web-hosted application – all of your organisation’s training records can be stored securely in a single web account

2. Analyses these records to identify health & safety training gaps – it has built-in artificial intelligence so that it can analyse any recognised health and safety  training qualifications against the needs of a given job  - this is training needs analysis at the push of a button.

3. Administrates these records – for example, it flags when a training qualification  has expired, sends email prompts when training needs to be taken / re-taken

If you would like a free, no-obligation trial of the Human Focus system and this new health and safety training compliance tool just drop me a line at

Taran Hewitt, an HSE mechanical specialist, told the coroner that whilst 15 weeks training may have been sufficient for someone who had already qualified as an apprentice in this area, it was not sufficient for someone with Andrew Ferrie’s training.  This case highlights a number of key points:

1. Employers have a legal duty to assess the competency of their employees from a health and safety perspective.

2. This is a judgement that is not always easy to make – as this case highlights there are a range of complexities that need to be taken into consideration

Wayne Priestley had assured Quarnmill Construction that the removal of asbestos was within his capability.  However, once the job began Priestley employed workers who had not received suitable asbestos safety training and they were not appropriately managed.   During the court proceedings Priestley claimed  that he had not deliberately mislead Quarmill Construction.

This case highlights two important points:

1. Both the Principal and contractor have a shared health and safety responsibility for work undertaken on the Principal’s site – if something goes wrong the principal must be able to show what they did to manage effectively the contractor
2. When it comes to health and safety competency, as this case shows, it is risky to simply take the word of a contractor or look just at previous work undertaken.  The only way a principal can be sure that workers are competent is to check the training records of each individual involved.   Employers do this with their own people, and when it comes to health and safety, the same checks have to be extended to contractor employees because of the shared duty of care.