ICAM: Compromising safety for the sales

On Friday I had a great conversation with Ashley Campbell about the top risks in confined space safety and why there's so many issues with incidents.

We both got quite passionate and animated when we started to talk about RTO's and the issuing of competencies.

We were both lamenting the number of RTO's that are compromising quality and worker safety by offering watered down competencies for the sake of a sale.

How can an RTO offer multiple competencies, often equating to over 100+ hours of training, in only 8 hours?

How can an RTO deem someone competent to undertake high risk activities, without proper training?

Buckling to client demands is a race to the bottom. It's also a race to sure fire questions being asked by the Regulators or worse case scenario, the Coroner, as to how an RTO deemed someone competent with inadequate training.

As an industry, we need to stop chasing the sale, and go back to what we really stand for- protecting employees and employers, and ensuring the safety of our most important assets- our people.