Posted By Paul Craythorne
Jimmy,

Until this manager proves a level of competence then the company should prohibit him from carrying out the tasks mentioned.

You should ascertain what qualifications/experience he has and whether he is trained to the current edition of the IEE Wiring Regs. I suggest you consult the IEE and the HSE for further advice/guidance on determing current levels of competence.

Regards,

Paul Craythorne

Posted By George Wedgwood
I agree with both responses and remember, even if someone is practising in a specific risk area, their competency does not necessarily remain current - I have always adopted a 'three-year rule' for competency and always recommend to Managers that their people have some relevant refresher training after that time. The idea of continuous learning is the best and should be looked at closely as this develops people who are more confident, more questioning and more competent in their subject area - i.e. adopt training that is planned together with the person. If you have someone come into your company they can have or posess, 'deemed competency' based on their CV, evidence of previous exoerience etc. but my advice is to only recorgnise this for abouta year, when refresher training should be required. You can make it a company policy for example, if authorising people for specific controls such as under a permit to work system, you cannot afford to compromise and many companies enforce refresher training periods of 2 & 3 years.

So, the answer is that your Production Manager may posess deemed competence but only if he can validate it - and only then for a limited period before he needs to take refresher technical theory and local practice training (with testing) to ensure he is working safely.

In my company, we do have operators who can access electrical panels after training but only to reset overloads or switch on/off. They are appropriately instructed to do this and protected from any further entry into exposed conductor areas of the panels, by the installation of polycarbonate sheets covering the entire panel, inside the door, with the appropriate reset buttons brought out for ease of access. That's as good as we can manage so far!

Regards, George (electrical engineer)

Posted By Alec Wood
I'd endorse the three year rule as posted above. It's a common timescale applied in competency assessments, for example, forklift truck drivers.

I remember someone on these forums recently quoting something I hadn't heard since university - "the half life of en engineer is about three years", meaning that every three years he will forget half of the stuff he has learned. Obviously in that time he will earn new stuff too, but the core competencies and background knowledge disappear over time as our day to day duties change and we become more specialised.

I'd suggest that a manager is likely to have lost much of his core knowledge as an engineer as he has moved into management, the longer it is since he made the move, the more that he'll have lost. I have a background in electronics repair and production and it scares me how much I have forgotten in the short time I've been doing this.

If there are competent persons on site then I would restrict access to them. If he wants access to the panels, and the obvious question is why, he could always go on a refresher to become competent.

Alec Wood
Samsung Electronics