By John Challen

The fact that accidents at work need to be reduced is work in progress – people working within the transportation sector, key industry decision makers and policy makers are all aware. With this in mind, a training course designed to improve the safety of workers has been developed by the Supply Chain Safety Leadership Group (SCSLG, part of National Highways) together with CIHT.

SCSLG realised that supervisor standards were not consistent. One of the areas where this was most evident was risk assessment and the identification of potential risks, while a key barrier to improving the capability of supervisors was finding the time, or ways, for training or releasing people from work. The CIHT course aims to address this imbalance and ensure that all supervisors are competent, capable and fit for challenges today and also in the future. 

The course – Supervisor Skills Level One Programme – addresses important skills gaps. These include the softer management skills that current providers of supervisor courses don’t include. “The format of learning has been developed into digital bite-size chunks, to encourage workers who have no time to do class-based training,” explains Sally Devine, CIHT Learn Associate. “The content has been developed by Tier 1 experts, who have used their skills, knowledge and experience to develop subject matter that meets the needs of today’s supervisors.”

Sally Devine, CIHT Learn Associate; credit: Sally Devine

Raising the bar for health and safety

There are nine courses that make up to the programme covering everything from team briefing and mental wellbeing, to risk awareness, incident management and communication skills.

The source of the Supervisor Skills Level One Programme is National Highway’s ‘Raising the bar’ health and safety initiative guidance, which identified best practice and minimum requirements. The goal of this guidance is to raise standards and improve supply chain engagement within construction and maintenance activities.

As such these courses have been created in line with the skills outlined in the guidance and endorsed by National Highways and approved as a competence for the Highways Passport scheme. These learnings should be considered as the supply chain in-house ‘go to’ course for all Level 1 supervisors and is the preferred standard training route. 

As well as being approved by National Highways, CIHT is mandated as a training provider to enter outcomes onto the Highways Passport scheme. As Devine concludes: “Whenever I talk to people about soft skills not being used in early management training, everybody nods. Everybody knows they're not included. But some research was done, skills gaps were identified, and this course has been developed as a result. Now, CIHT members can access this bundle of information for free.

“The fact that is it written by the great and good of the transport and construction sectors – and delivered by CIHT – means that quality is ensured at every turn. We’re hoping that the right training will lead to improved safety on every site, too.”

Discover more about the Supervisor Skills Level One Programme.

Newsletter image: working on road repairs in Winchester, Hampshire; credit: Shutterstock.