Safety, Competency and Commitment key topic
Addressing key topics within the safety, competency and commitment sector.
Comprehensive Competency Guidance
In any well-run organisation, staff are required to be competent to perform the tasks assigned to them. Organisations dealing with safety-related systems (e.g. fly-by-wire in aircraft, railway signalling systems, and shutdown systems in the petrochemical industry) may find that their customers, for example, need assurance that the organisation’s personnel can be shown to meet the necessary standards of competency. This includes the personnel involved as purchasers, operators and maintainers as well as the designers and implementers of such systems. Competence is not just about qualifications. It also includes skills (e.g. problem solving) and behaviours (e.g. personal integrity). The question is how do you assess competence?
The IET in collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the BCS, has for many years been developing guidance to help organisations answer this question. In 1999 the IET published “Safety Competency and Commitment – Competency Guidance for Safety-related System Practitioners”. This book proposed a competence assessment model and outlined the competence criteria required to perform certain safety-critical functions.
Following on from the success of this book, the IET, BCS and HSE have developed new guidance “Managing Competence for Safety-related Systems”. This provides organisations with the essential requirements for a successful competence management system (CMS) suitable for all staff at all levels of responsibility within organisations working on safety-related systems. The aim of the new guidance is not only enable organisations to meet the legal requirements for competence within Great Britain, but also help them to develop and fully utilise the skills of their staff.
The new guidance is aimed at those who are responsible for managing and assuring the competence of individuals and teams that might have an impact on the functional safety of safety-related systems. It is published in two separate pdf documents which can be downloaded from the following link:
The IET has reworked the original Safety Competency and Commitment document to tie in with the new management documents. This new version “Competence Criteria for Safety-related System Practitioners” is now available as a downloadable pdf file.
The new book uses the same competence assessment model, the same criteria and the same assessment record proforma as the original book, but with clearer text and improved document links.
The Competency Liaison Group (CLG), a joint IET, BCS and HSE committee is charged with maintaining all the CMS and Criteria guidance documents. The CLG welcomes comments regarding the guidance and plans to publish a frequently asked questions section on the IET website in the near future. Comments should be addressed to