Three employees from Richard lees Steel Decking have recently been awarded their NVQ's in safety net rigging. Josh Lee, Luke Horsfield and Anthony Smith are the first safety net riggers to achieve this new qualification in the UK.
Rob Harris of Shiresafety.com was responsible for managing the assessment process and creating the portfolio for each candidate. "Now the guys have achieved their qualificatlon, they can apply for their CSCS card which means they can evidence their competence in safety net rigging when signing in on site”.
FASET (the safety netting industry body) moved towards NVQ's to satisfy the MCG's publicly quoted objective of a fully qualified workforce by 2010. The previous FASET/CITB card was not recognised as a qualification and therefore FASET as an organisation chose to develop a safety net rigging NVQ with the CITB.
Mark Keily, EHS Manager for RLSD’s added “Richard Lees Steel Decking are committed to educating our employees and providing a qualified workforce. We worked closely with Shiresafety.com to help our candidates achieve their NVQ. We see it as a positive step in the development of our operatives, and when coupled with the CSCS safety net riggers card our clients can be confident in the abilities of our team on site”.
The NVQ is made up of 6 units-one of which is rigging safety nets. Rob Harris comments " the inclusion of other units means that the candidate becomes a more
rounded individual in terms of site awareness of health and safety issues.
It would be fair to say that the whole process appeared daunting to the candidates at the start, but they soon bought into the scheme-particularly when they were aware of the support from senior management”.
The safety netting industry has turned the corner as far as the assessing resource is concerned with observers confident that the previously reported backlog is under control, with optimism that new trainees can conclude their education with sufficient assessors and verifiers in place.