Quite regularly we come across this question What do Health and Safety consultants do? Mostly from individuals looking for a health and safety consultant jobs or people who want to start their own consulting firm or even from personal who recently completed training in health & safety. For what ever reason prospects of a career as a health and safety consultant are very good if you have the skill and experience.
Below are some of the duties and ideal features of a safety consultant:
Keeping health and safety first: A consultants job is to look out overall health and safety in the organization and making sure that it complies with health and safety laws and regulations of the country. To implement this they may initially do a thorough risk assessment. Based on assessment report, they draft safety policies and operational procedures. They need to find potential situations and areas of concerns that are hazardous and recommend solutions to overcome them. They need to listen to the workers, gather feedback and complaints from them. Conduct regular periodic inspections. Check out protective equipment, proper warning signs, instructions, clear path ways, electrical tags etc.
Latest Legal knowledge: A safety consultant needs to be aware of all the regulations concerning safety including new laws as and when they are formulated. It is this information that is most valuable asset for a consultant. They are supposed to be updated with new health and safety legislation. They are required to use their expertise in dealing and negotiating with different Governmental organizations like OSHA and law enforcement agencies.
Training in health and safety: A key area for a safety consultant is to train the staff on health and safety measures. They need to come up with training programs for different departments based on the risk assessment report. Create schedules and conduct regular health and safety training.
External health and safety consultants work on per job basis where they have a specific objective to complete. It can be any thing from assessment to training staff on health and safety issues. Some consultants work on contract basis for certain period like a week, month, a year etc. Most of the time the organization decides on the contract based on its requirements.