Health and safety training is one of the key contributors in reducing accidents and lost-time incidents on engineering construction sites.
The Engineering Construction Industry Training Board’s (ECITB) CCNSG Safety Passport quality-assured two-day course enhances health and safety awareness and is suitable for all workers in the industry. Alongside the nationally recognised safety card, the ECITB also has a course designed to provide an essential introduction to managing teams within the context of health and safety in the industry.
The CCNSG Leading a Team Safely (LaTS) course is a one-day workshop which focuses on the essentials of leadership such as planning, implementing and reviewing, with a natural emphasis on health and safety.
Aimed at supervisory staff who have responsibility for teams, the course is broken down into four elements that delve into areas such as the ingredients of a successful team; effective supervision, monitoring and communication; leadership skills and styles; and providing clear objectives.
Having a work plan
One of the four elements of the Leading a Team Safely (LaTS) course is titled ‘The Plan’ and goes into what you need to put in place to plan for a successful and safe job.
Experienced LaTS course tutor Mark Cockin, pictured, from Altrad, stresses to delegates: “It’s all about planning to ensure people are set to work safely.”
This section of the workshop expands on:
- The importance of clear communication to a good work plan and provides methods to make this more effective.
- How the right people with right skills, doing the right job, with the right tools, in the right place, at the right time can affect the outcome of the job.
- The relationship between work instructions, risk assessments and method statements to create an effective work plan before a job.
- Pre-start team briefings being clear, concise and provide accurate information, particularly around safe systems of work.
Effective pre-start briefings
The LaTS course stresses that the success of the pre-start briefing given by supervisors is all down to planning and will include the important elements of the work plan.
It goes on to detail the following important elements to getting the message across effectively during a pre-start briefing:
- Be clear and concise
- Engage the team, such as with prompts and asking questions
- Eye contact
- Choose a location free from noise and distraction
- Listen to questions from the team
- Motivate and lead by example.
The course outlines the following content the pre-start briefing should cover
Work instructions
Risk assessments
Method statement
Permit to work
Accident reporting
First aid
PPE
Access
Other activities in the area
Emergency procedures
Welfare
Leading a team safely
The LaTS workshop sets out to influence the behaviour of those that delegates supervise; to ensure good planning and communication of health and safety related to site work; and to help ensure workers operate on site more safely, lowering risk to themselves and others.
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