Nominations, proposed, seconded and with the agreement of the nominee to be with the Secretary 28 days before the AGM – last date being the March meeting. The following nominations are required Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and two Executive Committee members although all post holders are eligible to stand.

9.0 GUEST SPEAKER

The Chairman introduced the Guest Speakers as

Hazel started her presentation by indicating that she liked coming to Edinburgh so much, that she had even been prepared to come here, instead of laying on the beach in Cape Town. The reality of her delay to a holiday in Cape Town until the following Saturday was then admitted.

Hazel then presented the first paper, which she indicated which as to look at the developments, which had followed on from the Corporate Plan of 2000. This had been a 5-year rolling plan and specifically to look at recommendations from the Core Competence Working Party formed as part of that plan.

Routes to Membership

The following chart of routes to membership as applicable from 1998 was then shown with comments that the complex nature often lead to the wrong qualifications being quoted for jobs etc.

There are two level of competence as defined at levels 3 and level 4 and a number of Universities are now offering higher qualifications. Hazel had been at Herriot Watt today considering their training, which is used for HSE Inspectors. The Tech SP grade had been introduced in 1997.

Hazel then showed a graph depicting the growth in the various grades of membership over the past 10 years to March 2001. Corporate Members had grown from nominally 3,500 in 1991 to 10,000 in 2001, whereas the Associate grade had grown from nominally 1,200 in 1991 to 13,000 in 1999 to drop again to 9,00 in 2001. This drop being due to the closing of the grade of Associate and the introduction of Tech SP which stood at nominally 2,000 in 2001. Edinburgh Branch had a higher number of Tech SPs than is generally the case across the country, but other than that the spread of membership grade is fairly consistent.

Hazel did repeat the fact that anyone seeking to move from the Grade of Associate to the grade Tech SP should have registered to do so by the end of 2001. – At Headquarters they had received a fax at 9.20am on new years eve day where someone was concerned at having missed the boat. She did indicated that if anyone had failed to register and wished to do so, she felt certain that if they spoke to Denise nicely before the end of January, she may be prepared to stretch the point, but beyond that there would be no further opportunity.

This plan was exceptionally well rounded, but it suffered from lack of implementation due to the lack of resources available in 1987.

Required actions were based on the two strands of the Institution role – Learned Society & Professional Body. The monthly Branch meetings, Conferences and training course all being part of the Learned Society elements have been well sourced, but the Professional Body side looking more to the regulatory guidance etc has only recently been coming to the fore.

The plan saw the introduction of RSP in 1989 aimed at distinguishing between those corporate members who were competent professionals by virtue of training and experience, not just corporate members by qualification. There are only 2,671 RSPs out of a corporate membership of 11,624 despite the belief that there should be another 7,000 who should qualify.

CPD was introduced in 1992 and the lack of time to do it is often quoted for lack of registration as RSP. This is not true – we are all doing CPD in staying abreast of modern developments and keeping up to date. The return of CPD points is purely a record of what has been done which can be exceptionally useful during change of job.

CPD returns are now mandatory for RSP as and from 1994 and it will shortly be the same for Tech.SP although it is not so as yet.

Other changes since the 1987 Corporate Plan of 1987 has been the increase in the number of Universities now offering higher education in OHS topics, together with the OHSLB (Occupational Health & Safety Lead Body) introduction of national standards introduced in 1995.

The original grade of Associate was closed to new entrant in July 1998 and there is a lot of action in gaining their upgrade to the new Tech SP grade introduced in 1997.

Environmental issues were included in the Mission Statement and consideration was given to the need to introduce Environment as one of the core competencies. This was rejected at that stage as only 45% of the membership surveyed had any form of environmental competencies, but this may be reviewed later as things develop further.

The Employment NTO revised the National Standards so there was no longer a use of the degree of risk for the different levels of competence. They also introduced strategic level 5 units, which had not been identified previously.

The Core Competence Working party made the following recommendations :-

• The National standards developed by the Employment National Training Organisation should be adopted as the core competence requirements of the Institution. The relevant parts of the standards for this purpose will be those identified by the Professional Affairs Committee.
• The Institution should adopt a membership structure that reflects the attainment of these competence standards. Only those grades that reflect competence should be allowed designations and post-nominal letters
• The category of Fellow and entry to this category should be reviewed to encompass broader opportunities for entry
• The continuing Professional Development scheme should be reviewed to support current practitioner’s requirements and the needs of the future membership structure.
• The new proposals should be in place by June 2005

• Promote a positive health & safety culture
• Develop & assist with the implementation of an improved health & safety policy
• Develop & implement effective communication systems for health & safety information
• Develop & assist in the maintenance of individual & organisational competence in health & safety matters
• Identify & evaluate the health & safety hazards.
• Assess health & safety risks.
• Determine & assist in the implementation of health & safety risk control measures
• Develop & assist with the implementation of active performance monitoring systems for health & safety
• Develop and assist with the implementation of reactive performance monitoring (loss event) systems for health & safety
• Develop & assist with the implementation of health & safety emergency response systems & procedures
• Develop & assist with the implementation of health & safety review systems
• Develop & assist with the implementation of health & safety audit systems
• Contribute to health & safety legal actions
• Influence & keep pace with improvements in health & safety practice

• Evaluate & develop own practice
• Develop & review the organization’s health & safety policy
• Promote a positive health & safety culture
• Develop a strategy & plan for people resourcing change management
• Influence & keep pace with improvements in HSEP practice
• Identify organisational learning & development needs
• Manage the use of financial resources
• Secure financial resources for your organisation

Devise pilot & produce methods of assessing both skills & experience. This may well be through interviews (and pilots for this have started already with Fellowships) and/or Portfolios.

Review the format of CPD and extend its application to all relevant levels of membership.

Devise progression routes, which are clear and can be communicated to employers.

This could give us a membership structure of the following (but this is only one possibility)

Steven Vickers – Chief Executive of NEBOSH (National Examination Board in Occupational Safety & Health) was then introduced to the assembled group. Steven also stated he liked to come to Scotland, but unlike Hazel had not forgone sitting on a Cape Town beach to do so.

He believed that most English persons felt inferior to the Scots due to the breadth of abilities noted to derive from the Scottish people, be it engineers, scientists, the variety of languages spoken or even eminent poets. But he felt being a "Brummy" he also had similar standing to the Scots, combining the suave nature of the southerners with the straight talking bluff of the northerners. "Brummies" also had a substantial history of engineering, plus a wide variety of languages or dialects, which were bound to confuse all except those from the area, where they were spoken. However he did feel that the only poets of any standing from Birmingham may be Lenny Henry and Jasper Carrot, and these did not match those from Scotland.

Despite indication that a number of people have doubts about the objectivity and relativity of some of the apparent hair-splitting actions which they take, he hoped to show during his presentation that NEBOSH is moving with the times.

Here is no doubt that NEBOSH now recognise there is more than one route to competence and the strength of candidates across the qualification range is growing. NEBOSH is now expending overseas (mainly in certificate rather than Diploma – again mainly in the Oil industry) within overseas English speaking countries and it regards IOSH as the pre-eminent body in OSH.

It considers the big issues to be – Competency Management, meeting the needs of the stakeholders, integration of SHE, education of line management SMEs and the global imperative

The problems of a number of members he felt of proving competence via CPD was shown in the quotation – "He is not busy being born, he is busy dying". Time has to be spent keeping up to date to avoid the erosion of the original skills which will happen over a period of time and the modern developments of integration of all safety health & environment topics is a typical example.

Obviously the candidate is one major stakeholder, but we need also to consider the training provider and the employer in particular. It could be considered to be a problem by the employers if they realized that of the 5 category winners from last years NEBOSH specialty awards, only 1 is still in the employ of the company they were with during training. Industry has a part to play as do the Trades Unions – they are all stakeholders to varying degrees.

The within the greater sphere of society as a whole we must also bear cognizance of the requirements of the Professional Bodies, the workforce, government bodies, EU directives and the World Community as a whole.

What is it that each of the stakeholders require?

• Relevance – if NEBOSH area following old and outdated paths they need to be told and they like to think they are now more open to comment than may have been the case in the past.
• Flexible approach – It is of little use having an Environmental Diploma if there is no qualification leading up to it.
• Coherent standards – This is one area where they really score overseas
• Accessibility – there needs to be a suitable spread of providers to meet the needs.
• Recognition and status – again this is of prime importance internationally
• Reasonable costs – without this there would be no candidates or take up

NEBOSH will mirror IOSH’s requirements on competence and progress where there is an intention to include our qualifications within degree courses.

They intend to submit a modified part 1 diploma at level 4, so that part 2 could become an Advance Diploma

There will be a complete update of the Environmental Diploma, whilst IEMA could become the Environmental Certificate.

Small to medium enterprises need access to cheap multi-disciplinary consultancies with a rationalization of HSE & Environmental agencies direct to them, possibly over the Webb.

We must react to a changing world.

Both IOSH & NEBOSH must think globally or someone else will.

As quoted by Baha’u’llah in 1868

"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens"

NEBOSH is open to ideas.

10.0 DATE OF NEXT MEETINGS

Brian thanked the members for their attendance; he then set the dates for the next meetings, stressing that full information and directions are available on the Branch website, as:

The Speakers will be:

Alison Melrose, Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh

&

Pam Waldum, Health and Safety Executive, Edinburgh

The Speaker will be:

Steve Dunn, Environmental Health Department, Perth & Kinross Council

Members were encouraged to mingle during tea and make benefit from the attendance of the specialist guests before departing to proceed home in safety. The Chairman then closed the meeting.

Christopher E White MBE, FIOSH,RSP