Maintenance of Skills
Confined space workers competencies - refresh every three years
The maintenance of skills (competency), for confined space workers, is often overlooked. For routine confined space courses, we recommend your staff receive a refresher every three years in-line with their certification. For example confined space rescue teams, we recommend refresher training to be organised and available on a more regular basis, for example, 6 monthly.
The benefits of implementing a maintenance of skills (competency) programme for your confined space teams include:
- Legislative compliance (The Confined Space Regulations 1997)
- A documented and recorded process for all confined space training records – for auditing & compliance purposes
- Helps to reduce skills fade for risk critical environments
- Keeps your staff’s skills current to industry standards, accrediting bodies, legislation
- Identifies any current skills gap
- Emergency procedures can be implemented during training sessions to verify site procedures and team’s ability to react to dynamic situations
- Highlights confined space refresher dates
Prevent skills fade in your workforce
What’s more, by choosing to work with HFR Solutions CIC on an ongoing basis you can actively help prevent skills fade within your workforce and seek on-going specialist support with any confined space concerns. The specified risks associated with confined space working make frequent training and re-assessment of competency essential, to ensure site safety & compliance paramount.
Introducing maintenance checks
As part of your training and development programme and investment in staff, you should set-up regular maintenance checks for equipment inspection e.g. LOLER compliant equipment, rescue equipment, fall arrest inertia reels (SRL’s), winches, tripods, gas monitors etc. Personnel using the confined space equipment are required to maintain familiarity with this equipment periodically (whether on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis), to establish if your employees are retaining the key principles of the original training and able to demonstrate these skills time and time again, especially against any site-specific requirements.
It is of paramount importance that your staff maintain their skills and competencies beyond their initial training.
E-learning
Another option we can offer is an e-learning package to complement your training, this is available for a small cost to customers undertaking confined space training.
