Assessment Centres - Safety
In a short series of blogs, our Head of Technical Training, John Saysell provides some customer examples of how tailored Assessment and Development Centres can provide a much needed structure when looking to make improvements within your maintenance department. The third blog looks at an example of safety in the workplace.
How do I know my maintenance workforce is safe?
There was an accident on one of my customer’s sites. The accident was life changing for the maintenance technician involved and the Health and Safety Executive were called in to investigate.
HSE Investigation
The findings of the investigation were:
There was little evidence of competence and poor training records
Many technicians were carrying out complex maintenance tasks without serving an apprenticeship
The number of time-served technicians was insufficient
There was little recorded training in the technicians’ files
The customer reviewed their training records and some of the equipment on their sites. MCP also carried out some initial competence-based training on some workshop equipment.
Maintenance Development Centre
A maintenance development centre was then tailored to assess the skills of the maintenance workforce. Following this:
Successful candidates were awarded a certificate of competence across core maintenance tasks.
Candidates who did not meet the standard received training to get them up to standard. They were reassessed as part of the training. If successful they were awarded a certificate of competence.
A structure of trained trainers and assessors was created across the business to enable technicians to demonstrate competence in the same core maintenance tasks in the workplace. Subsequently this method of training and assessing skills was rolled out across additional maintenance tasks to give further evidence of competence.
There was a much safer working environment.
The improved technical competence led to improved line availability.
Do you need help with workforce safety?
If you are interested in how you can improve the safety of your workforce, then get in touch with us for an initial call to enable us to understand your requirements.
