Posted By Richie
Most safety courses train their students to achieve compliance with Legal requirements, which in most cases means HSE Guidance and ACOPS.

Abiding by HSE Guidance and ACOPS will only achieve the minimum acceptable safety standards in the eyes of a judge, therefore one lapse in attainment will likely fail to danger in a legal sense.

BS seems to be focusing more on manufacturing standards than working practices these days.

I feel there is a need for an Occupational Health and Safety-related site, modelled on the Wikipedia concept, which would be a central core of knowledge for:

a. best practice rather than legal minima,
b. current level of technological achievement,
c. lessons learned
d. etc. etc.

Any ideas on how this could be made to happen, and would it be a good idea if IOSH had a hand in it?

Richie

Posted By Andy Brazier
Richie
I actually think the situation is worse than you suggest. It seems to me that a lot of training material starts by taking students through what the regulations require. This is always a big turn-off to me. I find it much easier to understand a work process than remember what regulations say. That way I can understand the risks and identify controls. It is useful to know there is a regulation, but its contents is rarely that informative.

Equally, I think a lot of guidance and ACOPs do go beyond minimum legal requirements and provide some practical help.

You may want to look at my blog where I am collecting my notes for doing my nebosh general certificate. I am trying to do go through the various processes, and only referring to legislation once the process is clear. Have a look at nebosh.blogspot.com

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
There are existing sites around which attempt to undertake this, however when I and other senior practitioners have investigated some of these, we have been alarmed at the quality of information contained and we were concerned about the copyright of the material published.

If I were now seriously undertaking a programme of professional study, then I would need to be absolutely sure of the quality of the source of my material and this would be shown in the bibliography of the work undertaken.

The cost of running and monitoring a Safety Wikipedia type-site would be immense and to some extent this is already undertaken by Barbor, which is reflected in the fees that they charge.
Any good university resource centre will already have access to the type of resource.

Posted By Lee Mac
IOSH Technical, HSE/HSENI/HSA (whichever applies),OPSI, Rospa- these are the ones I normally use- can we today put our minds together and throw a list of sites we all use as good quality information sources.

Just an idea but it would be valuable for us all to know a good variety of reliable sources.

Lee

Posted By David Bannister
This site seems to be doing a pretty good job in answering queries. Incorrect info is usually very quickly corrected by more knowledgeable people.

Facts are rarely in dispute, Regs etc are sometimes incorrectly quoted and opinions are just that - opinions.

The posts here that attract most views and responses are dealing with opinions (or Friday fun) whilst a simple request for factual help mostly gets it very quickly.

Keep contributing.