A police swoop on a suspected fraudulent test centre should serve as a wake-up call for everyone responsible for health & safety on construction sites, according to the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
Four men arrested in Winchester last week are suspected of accepting payment to help unqualified people gain Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) cards without completing a genuine training course.
Gaming the system in this way would allow unqualified and inadequately trained people to gain access to construction sites putting themselves and others at risk of serious harm, the police reported.
“This incident should remind everyone that we cannot be complacent about health and safety despite all the measures the industry has put in place in recent years,” said BESA’s director of competence and compliance Jill Nicholls.
“We now have an advanced digital system for verifying that card holders are genuine and have completed the appropriate training for their specific work areas, and we would encourage everyone to use the system proactively, especially if they have any suspicions about someone’s qualifications.”
Credentials
BESA operates the CSCS partner card scheme Engineering Services SKILLcard which allows card holders and inspectors to access technical and health & safety qualifications in real time via a mobile phone app. As well as making it easier to check a holder’s professional credentials this also enables easy cancellation of counterfeit or revoked cards.
SKILLcard has been operating for 23 years and provides over 50,000 building services engineers with evidence of the qualifications they need to access sites. BESA also provides a suite of online health & safety training courses and tests to ensure all workers have the necessary qualifications to work safely and responsibly.
The digital Engineering Services SKILLcard gives users a single continually updated point of access to all their cards and the qualifications they hold. It also enables site access via a QR code that can be scanned directly from the card holder’s phone using the CSCS ‘Smart Check App’.
Digitisation was part of the sector’s response to the Building Safety Act which came into force in 2022 and intensified the scrutiny of individual competence and compliance. The digital SKILLcard was also a key step towards the ideal scenario where the skills of the entire workforce are instantly available, transparent, and constantly updated.
As well as trade operatives, BESA provides cards for those with supervisory and managerial responsibilities and others that are widely used by self-employed and agency workers and those seeking employment in the sector.
For more information about engineering services SKILLcards and how to apply go to: www.skillcard.org.uk