IF one was considering starting up a small consultancy business what field of H&S would you recommend focusing your attention to get the ball rolling? and how would you go about marketing it?
I appreciate that the market dictates, but what is the market dictating at the moment?

Thanks for any information.

Because the h&s market is so crowded I think you need to approach the problem from the viewpoint of "what can I offer that's different to the competition?"

You need to decide what your special skills are, be that CDM or COSHH or whatever, and then decide how those skills can be packaged for the market.

Having identified your potential market look next at what the competition are doing, how they're doing it, and what they charge. Then decide how you can do things differently to set you apart from the others.

It isn't easy, and it takes time, but it can be done :0)

As Farrell said "It isn't easy, and it takes time, but it can be done".

I still think I was dead lucky. I started my one-man business 7 years ago and the first customer I got still has me in two days a week doing risk assessment reviews, COSHH, accident investigations etc.

My 'marketing' began by driving around local industrial estates and looking (from my car window) at the business units, listing those who looked like they needed someone in to basically help them tidy up: untidy yards with barrels and materials everywhere, fork lift trucks but no marked footpaths, very loud noise coming from open shutter doors.

Indeed you can tell a lot driving by open shutter doors, you can see mountains of sawdust or scrap metal on shop floors, loud noise, fork trucks in a poorly managed warehouse. But do they WANT an H&S advisor?

Anyway I wrote to about 20 businesses and got that one response that still serves me well. I was lucky as they had a safety manager who had other responsibilities and he saw my letter as the answer to his problems.

Yes of course the other 19 businesses ignored me but as Farrell said "It isn't easy, and it takes time, but it can be done".

I've had over 30 customers in 7 years, and all the others got to me through my website and google. They needed H&S advice for various reasons but mainly because of HSE intervention, CDM, accidents, and CHAS.

John