Hi David

As I said on Chidi's post, employers (anywhere in the World) can set whatever person specifications that they choose.

So, if you don't meet the person specification for any specific vacancy you can either choose to not apply or decide how to explain how your qualifications and experience are equivalent or better than those set in the person spec.

....and you need to choose your words carefully if you want to convince an employer.

So, as example:

"The construction of the company's new Bonny Terminal Admin Building was the last project i managed."

....will not read well for most recruiters UNLESS your job was as e.g. Contracts Manager or Site Agent, rather than Health and Safety Whatever.

As most organisations in the UK understand that UK law implicity demands that H&S be treated as an integral part of the LINE MANAGEMENT function where the managers manage and the H&S bod is there as a (hopefully, trusted) adviser. You advise. The managers take your advice into account but come to decisions taking into account all the other priorities on their agenda.

There ARE still employers, perhaps more so in O&G and construction who still work on the basis that H&S is the job of the Health and Safety Inspector/Officer/Manager/Director/Head/etc but not so many as in the past.

The Construction (General Provisions) Regulations 1961 required that Contractors in Great Britain with any site reaching certain thresholds had to have a "Safety Supervisor".

Those who intended to comply with this legislation tended to do it by one of two routes:

(a) upskill their Site Agents and General Foremen (very few women in those days) by e.g. sending them off to get the CITB Site Management Safety Training Scheme or Supervisor parallel training qualification so that they knew enough about H&S issues to deal with this alongside all their other duties.

(b) employ an inhouse H&S Adviser or external H&S consultant to act as the "Safety Supervisor". Typically this person would visit once a month, do an inspection, fill in a tick box inspection sheet with a little text to comment on what was wrong and leave the site management team to close out the non-compliances.

In the late 1980s I was working for the Health and Safety Executive and would do unannounced visits to such construction sites and almost invariably where model (b) had been adopted site standards were poor and we would end up having the same conversation:

"Who advises you on health and safety?"

"We have a consultant from XYZ Safety."

"and what do they do?"

"They come round once a month to do a site inspection and may be a bit of training for the workforce."

"and then?"

"Well, they give us an inspection report which identifies any issues that we need to sort out."

"and then?"

"Well, we sort out any problems."

"and who is responsible for site health and safety for the other 29 days of the month?"

Which usually resulted in a lack of any sensible answer.

All this leaves as an expat back in the UK after some 15 years with a number of options:

1. Sell yourself as an Adviser rather than a Manager.

2. Get a job with XYZ Safety - such companies DO STILL exist

3. Get a job as a site based "H&S Inspector or whatever" where the management have slopey shoulders and are happy as long as (i) the incident stats don't go up and (ii) if you are dishing out enough Red and Yellow cards to show the workforce who is in charge of their H&S.

There is a variant of 3. where the job might be site based or as a visiting person but where the role is essentially a variant of 1.

Finally, it might be worth looking at either repeating NEBOSH General or doing some other Level 3 H&S qualification as your 2006 certificate is long past its expiry date, or going for a higher qualification (e.g. Level 6) to strengthen your CV.

Edited by user 24 August 2023 14:25:51(UTC)  | Reason: Single word edit