NEBOSH International Diploma Examiners Guidance - Unit D
Examiners’ Report Guidance NEBOSH NATIONAL DIPLOMA IN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY NEBOSH INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMA IN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY Unit D and ID Assignments
CONTENTS
Introduction
2
Unit D and ID Assignments
3
2011 NEBOSH, Dominus Way, Meridian Business Park, Leicester LE19 1QW tel: 0116 263 4700
fax: 0116 282 4000
email:
[email protected]
website: www.nebosh.org.uk
The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health is a registered charity, number 1010444 T(s):exreps/UnitD/UnitD
EXTERNAL
JP/DA/REW
Introduction
NEBOSH (The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health) was formed in 1979 as an independent examining board and awarding body with charitable status. We offer a comprehensive range of globally-recognised, vocationally-related qualifications designed to meet the health, safety, environmental and risk management needs of all places of work in both the private and public sectors. Courses leading to NEBOSH qualifications attract over 25,000 candidates annually and are offered by over 400 course providers in 65 countries around the world. Our qualifications are recognised by the relevant professional membership bodies including the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM). NEBOSH is an awarding body to be recognised and regulated by the UK regulatory authorities:
The Office of the Qualifications and Examinations Regulator (Ofqual) in England The Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS) in Wales The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) in Scotland
NEBOSH follows the latest version of “GCSE, GCE, principal learning and project code of practice” published by the regulatory authorities in relation to examination setting and marking (available at the Ofqual website www.ofqual.gov.uk). While not obliged to adhere to this code, NEBOSH regards it as best practice to do so. Candidates’ scripts are marked by a team of Examiners appointed by NEBOSH on the basis of their qualifications and experience. The standard of the qualification is determined by NEBOSH, which is overseen by the NEBOSH Council comprising nominees from, amongst others, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). Representatives of course providers, from both the public and private sectors, are elected to the NEBOSH Council. This report provides information on the performance of candidates which it is hoped will be useful to candidates and tutors in preparation for future submissions. It is intended to be constructive and informative and to promote better understanding of the syllabus content and the application of assessment criteria. © NEBOSH 2011
Any enquiries about this report publication should be addressed to: NEBOSH Dominus Way Meridian Business Park Leicester LE10 1QW Tel: 0116 263 4700 Fax: 0116 282 4000 Email:
[email protected]
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
2/9
Guidance
Assignment Brief Candidates are required to carry out a detailed review of the health and safety performance of a workplace or organisation and to produce a justified action plan to improve performance. The assignment will require the candidate to apply the knowledge and understanding gained from their studies of elements of Units A, IA, B, IB, C and IC in a practical environment and to carry out critical analysis and evaluation of information gathered during the review. The level of work should be that expected of a competent occupational health and safety practitioner working within any organisation. The report should include:
an introduction that sets the scene by stating clear aims and objectives and a description of the methodology employed to carry out the assignment;
a description of the chosen workplace/organisation to set a context for the assignment. The candidate will need to consider the legal framework within which the workplace/organisation operates;
an overview of the current health and safety management arrangements in which the candidate should critically review the health and safety management system;
a survey of a wide range of significant hazards or activities within the workplace. The candidate should prioritise the identified hazards or activities and, depending on the nature and extent of identified hazards or activities, for each of two of the hazards, one physical and one appropriate to health and welfare, carry out a risk assessment. This should include an evaluation of the effectiveness of the organisation in controlling the risk arising from the hazards or activities identified and proposals to further control the hazard(s) and reduce risks;
conclusions which summarise the main issues identified in the candidate’s work together with justified recommendations for improvement;
a costed and prioritised action plan for implementation of the candidate’s recommendations in each of the two areas;
an executive summary of the report.
It is important that a suitable workplace upon which the assignment research will be based is chosen. The workplace should be large enough to provide both an opportunity for the review of the health and safety management system and a sufficiently large range of significant hazards in the areas covered by Units B, IB, C and IC to provide an adequate range for identification and prioritisation. Candidates who have difficulty identifying a suitable workplace should ask their tutor for advice.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
3/9
If the organisation is very large, in order that the assignment is manageable the candidate should limit the area considered. In such circumstances it might be more appropriate to consider a department or division of the organisation rather than the organisation as a whole, although obviously, the health and safety management system will probably be that adopted by the whole organisation. Candidates should ensure that they understand fully the requirements of the brief and are recommended to prepare an outline plan of their approach that can be discussed with a tutor. While it would not be appropriate for tutors to give specific information on content, their role is to ensure that the candidate is ‘heading in the right direction’ – for example, they may comment on whether the candidate has chosen a suitable workplace or situation that satisfies the brief and will give sufficient scope to achieve the necessary breadth and depth of content required at Diploma level. Before attempting the Unit D and ID assignment it is necessary for candidates to be fully conversant with key elements of the syllabus for Units A, IA, B, IB, C and IC. To facilitate this learning process it is essential that candidates hold regular discussions with their tutor(s) throughout the period of their studies, and complete the Assignment Log provided in the NEBOSH Unit D and ID Candidate Guidance, which are available from the NEBOSH website. There is strong evidence to suggest that candidates who perform better in Unit D and ID use the Assignment Log from the very beginning of their studies, and at appropriate points on their learning journey. Candidates who complete their Assignment Log retrospectively at the end of their studies will obtain little or no benefit, and may well struggle to perform well in Unit D and ID. Course providers are requested to ensure that candidates use their Assignment Logs accordingly.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
4/9
What Examiners are looking for Those candidates who perform well in Unit D and ID evidently follow the detailed guidance mentioned above very closely. It is clear that they understand and apply the requirements of the said guidance to structure their report, often using the guidance content to produce section headings in their work. It is disappointing, though, that far too many candidates fail to follow the guidance provided by NEBOSH. The following additional information includes many of the most common (and most easily avoided) problems being continually repeated by some candidates.
Executive Summary The executive summary should provide a clear and concise overview of the important points arising from the work contained within the main body of the report and summarise the main conclusions and recommendations arising. It is important that the executive summary is written in a style and format which will allow it to be read quickly and easily by the intended audience – senior managers and executives. Some candidates provide half page executive summaries which fail to cover the content required. At least one full page is required to do justice to the summary. In contrast some candidates try to include more content by reducing the font size, which will lead to maximum marks not being awarded for this section of the report. Candidates should stick to the allowed one side of A4 paper, using a single-spaced Arial 11 font size (or similar) and 2cm print margins. There is a particular need for candidates to demonstrate their ability to write in a concise and persuasive manner when composing their executive summaries. This section should ‘grab the attention’ of the reader and provide them with a clear sense of what is happening in terms of health and safety management, what more needs to be done and why it is so important to take action. Executive summaries are often well done, and the highest marks are given to candidates who clearly and concisely gave an overview of the report and its conclusions and recommendations. Exemplary reports often include a well structured executive summary.
Introduction The introduction provides a foundation for the report and enables the reader to place the following information and judgements in context. Most candidates provide a good or satisfactory introductory section, however, some omit clearly stated aims and objectives and provide limited information on methodology. Properly written aims, objectives and methodology sections are the key to producing a good assignment. Valuable marks can easily be obtained in this section by candidates properly outlining what they intend to do and how they are going to do it. The aims and objectives should also be checked on completion of writing the report to ensure that the candidate has done what they intended to do at the outset. Better submissions show evidence of candidates putting a lot of thought into developing a clear and concise aim – explaining and justifying the purpose of the report. They also developed a set of meaningful objectives for the report, which could be used throughout the writing / preparation of the report to ‘sense check’ their own progress.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
5/9
Those candidates who then go on to explain their chosen methods, explaining and justifying basic principles as they did so, achieve good marks in this area. Clear statements of what research has been carried out, which models have been chosen and why, are most useful and are usually evident in better reports. In this section Examiners are looking for a description of the chosen workplace/organisation and an outline of the essential features of the legal environment within which the workplace/organisation operates. There is no need for candidates to spend vast amounts of effort on describing their chosen workplace in minute detail, and there is definitely no need for copious amounts of information on the chosen workplace, its history or its management systems to be included in the appendices. Better submissions keep the general description of the chosen workplace relatively short and concise and relevant to the assignment brief. It is important that working arrangements, work environment, shift patterns and peripatetic worker activities are covered in this section. For Unit D submissions an outline of the principal legal (statute, common, civil and criminal) and other requirements within which the organisation operates should be included. Some candidates produce a list of the various laws and regulations, but only the better submissions attempt to apply these legislative requirements to their workplace as required. Candidates are required to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of relevant statutes, regulations, ACoPs, standards and guidance and outline these in the context of the development of an effective health and safety management programme. An exhaustive list of statutes, regulations and case law is not expected. Many candidates outline criminal law issues in the introduction, with the better submissions explaining the organisational context and the relevance of such acts and regulations to the chosen organisation’s activities. Those candidates who score particularly well in this section ensure that they give time and effort to identifying and explaining the relevant civil cases, giving clear and accurate references to carefully selected case law. Better submissions paint a balanced picture of the criminal and civil organisational context. Candidates submitting Unit ID assignments are required to outline the legal framework (governmental and non-governmental) requirements within which the organisation operates. Candidates are required to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the relevant legal framework and most importantly the ability to put these in the context of the development of an effective health and safety management programme.
Review of the Health and Safety Management System Candidates are required to give an overview of the current health and safety management system in their chosen workplace/organisation. Many candidates outline or describe a generic health and safety model (such as HSG65) without making clear reference to their own management system, and cannot therefore be awarded maximum marks. Candidates who do this are generally unable to produce an adequate critical review of the organisation’s health and safety management system. The brief requires candidates to compare their current system with a recognised model and provide a clear systematic description of gaps and where no gaps exist, for all areas of the management system, identify priorities for improvement. Reports awarded the highest marks usually include sections which clearly demonstrate the writer’s understanding of chosen models for health and safety management systems. Better reports outline the selected model before explaining the relevance of the models’ elements to existing policy, arrangements, etc. A good working knowledge of HSG65 (or a similar model) is essential for those candidates wishing to perform well.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
6/9
The gap analysis section requires candidates to assess their chosen organisation’s health and safety management systems against a recognised model such as HSG65. Better submissions clearly identify shortcomings in the chosen health and safety management systems against such a standard, carrying forward these identified gaps into the recommendations and action plans required later in the report. Better submissions often summarise the gaps identified in tabular format, which is a useful technique and allows candidates to display the gaps, required improvements and priorities in a clear and concise manner.
Hazards and Risk Assessments Candidates need to identify 15 different hazards or more across the areas of ‘Physical’ hazards and ‘Health and Welfare’ hazards. Some candidates fail to discuss the implications of those hazards identified. Candidates often take great care to ensure that they have clearly differentiated between ‘Physical’ and ‘Health and Welfare’ hazards, using the Unit B, IB, C and IC syllabus content as a way of correctly categorising their hazards. Risk assessments are usually found to be satisfactory, but some candidates fail to describe their chosen risk assessment process or methodology. Risk quantification models are sometimes included without adequate explanation of their meaning or the interpretation of their relevance. Higher scoring reports are those where candidates demonstrate a clear understanding of the difference between the terms ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’. Better submissions take a methodical approach to breaking down and differentiating between work activities, hazards, risks and possible outcomes. Candidates must be able to demonstrate their understanding of risk assessment principles – they should clearly explain the risk assessment process being used, detailing how any ranking or scoring systems are used for comparison, prioritisation and consideration of improvements required. It is essential that candidates ensure that they select one ‘Physical hazard’ and one ‘Health hazard’ for closer assessment using a recognised risk assessment approach. Some candidates fail to score marks due to the selection of two Physical or two Health hazards rather than one of each. Again candidates should use the Unit B, IB, C and IC syllabus content as a way of correctly categorising their hazards and associated risk assessments. Many candidates adopt an approach to risk assessment based on the HSE’s 5 steps to risk assessment, which may be appropriate in many circumstances, but it cannot be stressed enough that in some situations this approach is not appropriate. The content of the diploma syllabus outlines more detailed and technical approaches to assessing risks that should be considered where an initial appraisal suggests risk may be significant. The classic examples include the failure by some to use specific risk assessment tools for manual handling, noise or hazardous substance assessments. The ‘5 Steps’ approach is not appropriate when carrying out a CoSHH assessment. Those candidates who recognise the requirement to use the correct risk assessment tool for the task in hand, and, as a result, demonstrate the required level of depth, achieve good scores in this area. When using the ‘5 Steps’ approach candidates must ensure that they place sufficient emphasis and detail when identifying who might be harmed and how, rather than including generic headings of groups of people or blandly stating “staff, contractors and visitors”.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
7/9
Candidates should avoid using their company’s risk assessment templates, without checking them for completeness and adequacy beforehand. Inclusion of risk assessments completed many months prior to the relevant submission date is not acceptable, particularly if there is evidence that such templates were not completed by the candidate themselves. Risk assessments submitted for this assignment should be the candidate’s own original work. Good submissions ensure that gaps and areas for improvement from the main body of the report are carried forward into the final part of the report. The conclusions should refer to things identified in the main body, and recommendations should be similarly rooted in things discussed earlier in the report. Recommendations should then be carried forward into the respective action plans, where consideration should also be given to priorities, costs, time scale and how and when progress against the plans will be reviewed.
Conclusions Some candidates do not refer back to aims and objectives when writing their conclusions. Many do not include their findings and fail to summarise them, whilst many others include recommendations and other suggestions for improvements in their conclusions. Candidates should carry out ‘Quality’ checks on the work done, and refer back to their aims and objectives, critically assessing in their conclusion whether they have met their own aims and objectives.
Recommendations and Action Plans Recommendations sections should follow on from main conclusions in a logical manner, and need to provide any indication of prioritisation, justification and ‘Cost Benefit Analysis’ in relation to the recommendations. The two action plans required should be separate from each other, and must provide the information in a tabulated format with all of the relevant headings included. Actions plans must also include some information relating to how and when progress against the recommendations will be reviewed.
Planning and Presentation Although the standard of presentation of many reports is generally fair, some candidates’ reports are ‘let down’ by some simple omissions and mistakes. Candidates should run a spelling check on their reports and ask an independent ‘lay person’ to read the report before submission. In some instances the reports are difficult to read and use too many unnecessary tables or images. The inclusion of scanned copies of handwritten work or flip charts should be avoided. Reports need to be properly formatted, with pagination, headers and footers, section headings being included. It is important to remember that the intended audience for this type of report is senior managers, and, as such, should be clear, concise and well structured throughout. Some reports are far too long with unnecessary or unrelated information included.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
8/9
References and Research Some reference sections are poorly produced and many reports do no give any indication or evidence of research done. Better submissions make clear reference to text books, ACoPs or Guidance Notes used in their reports, clearly citing the details of the reference (full title, ISBN number, date of publication, publisher, etc.) at the appropriate point in their reports. It is not appropriate to just include a long and generic list of legislation or texts, which may have been gleaned from course notes. There is clear advice on the use of suitable referencing systems in the NEBOSH Guide, and candidates should ensure that they are capable of using a tried and tested referencing convention.
Diploma Accredited Course Providers Providers should ensure that candidates carry out the required level of planning and preparation for the completion of their assignment reports, and that candidates complete their assignment logs’ at relevant points during their studies. Providers should provide a ‘critical review’ of the work being done by their respective candidates and should ensure that information available from NEBOSH relating to Unit D and ID reports is brought to the attention of all candidates. Providers should also ensure that candidates who do not speak English as their first language are given a sufficient level of additional support in the production of their assignments.
Concluding Comments The information above should give some clear pointers to candidates and course providers regarding the successful completion of Unit D and ID assignments. This information complements other published guidance from NEBOSH. The main points to remember are:
Write the reports in a clear and concise manner Use the mark scheme to help structure reports In the introduction state what is to be done and how Be clear about the differences between hazards and risk Check that at least 15 hazards are identified Check that two ‘highest priority’ hazards are identified Ensure that two selected hazards are not both ‘Physical’ or both ‘Health and Welfare’ Use the most appropriate risk assessment tool for the two chosen hazards Include information on review periodicity and mechanisms Include cost benefit justifications for recommendations Support main recommendations with a persuasive argument for implementation Check accuracy and clarity of references.
Unit D & ID Examiners’ Report Guidance
9/9
The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health Dominus Way Meridian Business Park Leicester LE19 1QW telephone +44 (0)116 2634700 fax +44 (0)116 2824000 email
[email protected] www.nebosh.org.uk
