Recently Josh O’Boyle, our major events consultant at All About Sports Events completed a NEBOSH General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety. It’s by no means the most in depth or highest qualification you can achieve in Health and Safety but it certainly lays the foundations to understand the legislation here in the UK and sets standards for delivering safe events. For this reason, we recommend that every event manager should consider completing a health and safety qualification of some description, whether that be NEBOSH, IOSH, British Safety Council or an alternative provider.
Here are our top reasons for completing a health and safety qualification and why there’s no better time to get one booked in:
You don’t know what you don’t know!
A complicated heading, but it’s simple. It’s not until you complete a qualification in health and safety that you truly understand the processes, legislation and mitigations that should be put in place to make an event site safe. That being said, a good event manager will learn through the years what actions and processes need to be completed to ‘tick the boxes’, but it’s not until you complete a health and safety qualification that you truly understand why these actions need to be completed. Once an event manager understands ‘why’ it allows them to look at a site in a different way, ultimately making it safer and legally compliant.
COVID-19
The world is quickly changing due to COVID-19, even with a vaccine on the horizon there is going to be a significant focus on health and safety on event sites in the future. Having a health and safety qualification in your arsenal allows you to fulfil a wider range of roles on an event site, whilst giving your client the peace of mind that their event is in a competent and qualified set of hands.
Legal Duties
When completing a H&S qualification of any level you will cover the legal duties and responsibilities that you as event manager (or employer) have. This covers the basic legislation found in the Health and Safety at Work Regulations, but also outlines the responsibilities you have to manage areas of an event like construction sites (CDM regulations) and specific risks (eg. fire or hazardous substances). More importantly, the course will teach you where to look for the latest legislation, regulations, approved codes of practice and government generated guidance.
Managing Risk
If you work in events you’ve likely completed a risk assessment or two! However, it’s certainly worth completing a health and safety course to help you understand all the qualitative and quantitative methods of recording risks, the reasons for prioritising certain mitigations and which risks have legislation associated with them.
Competent Person
A large amount of UK legislation makes reference to a ‘competent’ person when completing actions like risk profiling, risk assessments, monitoring and health and safety reviews. Having a qualification in health and safety may not mean you are considered a ‘competent’ person in all situations but it is certainly a step in the right direction to operate safely on an event site.
If you would like to talk to Josh about his experience completing the NEBOSH General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety then please feel free to drop him an email josh@allaboutsportsevents.co.uk.
Many thanks to Wise Global Training Ltd for providing great course material and brilliant exam preparation support.
Image Credit: Safe Cycling
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