Pye Tait Report on Competence in Construction

Pye Tait has recently completed extensive research evaluating the effectiveness of the various routes to competence available to site-based workers in construction (including supervisors and site managers).

The key research questions were whether current routes to competence – qualifications (both work-based and college-based), short courses, safety passports, competent person development, card schemes, as well as on-the-job mentoring and general experience – are adequate for the sector, and whether our understanding of what makes a construction worker “competent”, in the deepest health & safety sense, remains sufficiently robust for current-day needs.

Competence is evidenced directly by competence-based qualifications or indirectly by a plethora of card and passport schemes.

The research highlights other safety-critical industries that require ‘job competence’, enhanced health & safety awareness, and, critically, ‘human factors’. It concludes that the industry’s current understanding of “competence” may warrant extension to develop an ‘industry-specific’ definition and broadening to encompass both situational awareness and the sustaining of appropriate behaviours.

Our main report has now been published on HSE’s website and is available from the Published Reports section of our website.