The provision of Health and Safety training is a vital part of any factory operation
and to be effective, such programmes must be fully integrated into all aspects of company operations and procedures.

Mr Tom Chambers, Safety, Health and Environment Manager, Greencore Group, contacted a number of national training providers to put forward their ideas on how they would develop and deliver a 3-year health and safety training programme for the newly constructed site at Breadwinner, North London.

Training providers were invited into the factory to meet with staff and gain first hand knowledge of the factory’s operations and procedures and to prepare a detailed plan outlining their proposals to train all employees over a three year period.

After careful consideration of the proposals, the Safety and Reliability section of WS Atkins, based in Warrington, was awarded the contract.

The programme put forward by Richard Butler of WS Atkins, provided a systematic approach to the development, delivery and evaluation of the proposed training programmes. The following courses will be offered.

Training Course Provision
The following courses will be developed and delivered to meet the specific requirements of staff at the factory:-

• Fire Safety for Fire Wardens (3 hours);
• Fire Safety for Managers (1 day);
• Health and Safety for Directors (1 day);
• Managing Contractors;
• Managing Health and Safety for senior Managers (3 days);
• Managing Health and Safety for Supervisors (3 days);
• Manual Handling programme for supervisors and operators (5 days);
• Noise protection (2 hours);
• Training the Health and Safety Trainer (2 days plus continual assessment);
• Working Safely for Office Staff (1 day); and
• Working Safely for Operators (1 day).

Development
To ensure the programme is relevant to the day-to-day operations of the factory
each course will be customised to reflect the procedures, safe-systems of work and operations in existence at factory.

Evaluation
To ensure continual improvement of the training programme, each course and the whole programme will evaluated by:-

• Use of the HSE’s climate survey tool,
• End of course assessments
  and
• Competence based assessments of delegates performance in the workplace.

The results of the evaluation process will be published on this web page.

Health and Safety Section of WS Atkins
WS Atkins is one of the UK leading consultancies, employing over 8,000 full time staff.

The safety and reliability section, based in Warrington, provides health and safety consultancy and training services to a wide range of clients including:-

• HSE
• PowerGen
• Royal Parks
• The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work
• DTI
• BNFL
  and
• Northern Electric