Welcome Guest! The IOSH forums are a free resource to both members and non-members. Login or register to use them

Postings made by forum users are personal opinions. IOSH is not responsible for the content or accuracy of any of the information contained in forum postings. Please carefully consider any advice you receive.

Notification

Icon
Error

Options
Go to last post Go to first unread
Sarah Yates  
#1 Posted : 29 November 2023 11:21:27(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Sarah Yates

Can anyone give me in lamens terms what adequate supervision actually means

Can junior technicians who have just passed an apprenticeship be left to work on their own if they have been given a set of tasks to perform? 

Kate  
#2 Posted : 29 November 2023 11:54:44(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Kate

What constitutes adequate supervision depends on the individuals, the tasks and the work environment.

For this reason, it's not possible to give a general rule.

The nature of the supervision doesn't always have to be someone standing there looking over their shoulder all the time.  Depending on the circumstances, it could be periodic contact or just someone being available in case of problems.

Nerdy1  
#3 Posted : 29 November 2023 12:09:06(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Nerdy1

Unfortunately there is no one cap fits all, hence the vague terminology.

For your scenarion it would depend on the tasks given and the competency of the Junior Technicians. There is no simple answer. We use a competency sign off during our apprenticeships, so that apprentices can be supervised doing tasks until we feel they are competent enough to carry them out unsupervised. Some tasks will be authorised to be carried out unsupervised while they are still apprentices. Not all apprentices will be authorised at the same stage of their apprenticeships.

You also have to consider emotional maturity. You may have newley qualified Junior Technicians with hugely varying ages. A 25 year old is more emotionally mature than an 18 year old and therefore should require less supervision.

Hope that helps but probably not!!

thanks 3 users thanked Nerdy1 for this useful post.
Kate on 29/11/2023(UTC), A Kurdziel on 29/11/2023(UTC), peter gotch on 29/11/2023(UTC)
A Kurdziel  
#4 Posted : 29 November 2023 13:57:02(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

So the Health and Safety at Work Act  Section 2(c) makes it clear that an employer must ensure that they provide employees with “the provision of such information, instruction, training, and supervision as is necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of his employees;”  . What this means in practice is open to interpretation. There does not seem to be much case law about this (not in Redgrave’s anyway) . There is something in Pope v Gould(HSE Inspector) QBD, where  an employer argued that they should not be held liable for an injury to an employee because the employee did not follow specific instructions, which caused the injury. The Divisional Court ruled that simply instructing someone was not enough; the employer must ensure that the instructions are being followed. That touches on supervision, I suppose.

It is not clear what adequate supervision looks like. It might be adequate if there are no accidents, which means there  is more than  an element of hindsight in this: if there is an accident then obviously  lack of supervision could be a cause.

There was a case (15 years ago?), where a lift maintenance engineer fell down an open lift shaft and a lack of supervision was deemed to one of the causes of the accident. It was not made clear how the employer was meant to supervise a peripatetic  engineer miles from base.

mike350  
#5 Posted : 01 December 2023 07:49:12(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
mike350

A business I worked for received a Fee For Intervention some time ago, one of the reasons quoted was "Lack of adequate Supervision". The IP in the incident was our Senior Supervisor on site, with forty years of industry experience and twenty plus years as a Team Leader who had what the Inspector called a Brain Fart and did something no one could have anticipated.

The implication in the report being that there should have been a Manager on site to have Managed him, I did ask how far up the chain the Supervision requirement should go but didn't get a reply!

There were to be fair other failings but this was the one they led with in their report

peter gotch  
#6 Posted : 01 December 2023 11:28:58(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Morning Mike - you point to one of the many problems with FFI.

That the fee charged is for the entire visit and follow up however many faults there might be that would each justify FFI for PART of the visit and PART of the follow up.

Which means that if you might reasonably challenge the whole of the FFI if it only related to an Inspector's opinion that the supervision was inadequate, there's no point as they have you, in colloquial speak, bang to rights on other matters and so it would make absolutely no difference to the price tag.

The result being that you haven't got a clue what this Inspector might think would have been "adequate supervision" had they not had the benefit of the hindsight of knowing that it was the supervisor who was supposedly NOT "adequately supervised", particularly if, as you write, the Inspector had no suggestions as to what would  have been appropriate.

....and in turn that is likely to lead to a lack of trust in the competence of HSE and its Inspectors.

thanks 1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
mike350 on 01/12/2023(UTC)
A Kurdziel  
#7 Posted : 01 December 2023 12:12:16(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

How does supervision deal with the ‘brain fart’ issue? As Peter says if they( the enforcers)  have you for more than one thing it there is usually no point challenger each point. During the covid epidemic I heard of cases of  not following Covid guidance being added even though as well all know, it was never a H&S matter.

It could be that if anyone has any accident and they are not in direct line of sight of a supervisor, they are not being supervised which is a breach of reg 2(c).

John Elder  
#8 Posted : 01 December 2023 13:26:45(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
John Elder

Hi

All

Although not particularly what you are looking for UKAS produce a good document RG101.

It is a copywrite document so I cannot extract or print the relevant parts here.

The document relates to working within explosive atmospheres however, the annexes within the document have a very good sections laying out both Qualification and Competency categories of which there are three categories of person based upon their experience qualifications and training will full explanations as to what this might entail.

Then there is a annex on levels of supervision based of the category of persons being supervised and managed. This has 4 levels with definitions of what each level entails.

For information the three levels are considered as occasional, infrequent, frequent and constant. And full descriptions explaining what each level means in reality.

Using this documents explanations and format you could easily adapt and apply it to any trade/job or employee.

mike350  
#9 Posted : 01 December 2023 14:55:55(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
mike350

In our case as Peter say's they had identified two other minor breaches so my advice was not to challenge the FFI, because the fact that there were two other minor breaches meant that we would still have received the FFI. The main thing was to learn from the mistakes, make the necessary changes and move on.

It always irked me though that they highlighted that element which wasn't mentioned at any point during their investigation so I'm interested to see what RG101 that John referenced says.

Users browsing this topic
Guest
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.