Well what a year so far! Who’d have ever thought we’d all end up locked down and wearing masks?

The Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped my work, whilst things were very slow for a time, I’ve been lucky enough to have ran several NEBOSH National General Certificate courses and one National Fire Certificate as well as a range of other shorter training courses such as permit to work systems, control of contractors, CDM 2015 and IOSH Managing Safely.

I do miss travelling and face to face work with my Clients and course delegates. However, we are all in this together and hopefully a level of the normal we used to enjoy will return.

As a health and safety expert, I can see how we ended up in this situation. This makes managing risk and understanding how to mitigate it extremely important, which is what I’ve spent the best part of my working life teaching and consulting on. The pandemic has been a good point of reference when discussing health and safety with course groups over the last months.

The Covid-19 pandemic also hasn’t stopped me ensuring the best possible service, in fact I used some of lockdown time to develop and improve training courses, and some of my ideas for managing workplace health and safety. I turned my office into a mini recording studio in March, complete with professional microphones, speakers, HD cameras to ensure that virtual training via Zoom and my consultancy work continued and ran smoothly. I also managed to get lots of gardening, decorating and dog walking done too!

I’d say the pandemic has increased my passion for health and safety and how effective management can prevent harm. It’s clear that as we imerge from this situation, there is a risk that Employers may lose focus on safety while trying to make up for lost time and keep businesses running. Many in safety, including myself predict accidents will increase if we don’t ensure a constant monitoring and review the safety systems that keep people safe. The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are undertaking random visits to companies to ensure safety isn’t compromised by the rush to get back to business.

My Clients are still the most important factor in my business, so rest assured you can trust in me and anyone else in my company - we are all interested in what you want, your views and making you happy to have chosen us.

The new NEBOSH Fire Safety Certificate has launced this month (1st March). It was previously a 10 day course linked to NEBOSH Units of the National General Certificate (NG1). It is now stand-a-lone 4 day course with an open book exam! and a practical fire risk assessment based on PAS 79. Check the page out here for more information.

Thank you for visiting the site, if I can be of any assistance please get in touch, in the meantime stay safe and keep following the rules that can keep us all safe while we wait for this situation to subside.

Phil Douglas – Chartered Health and Safety Practitioner (CMIOSH) and Managing Director - March 2021