Health and safety training for people performing hazardous work

A few words about health and safety training for people who perform particularly dangerous work

When you stroll through city streets, construction workers working on the top floors of high-rise buildings are a common sight. You can also often meet energy sector employees who are trying to locate and repair a failure on power poles. Both of these activities are particularly dangerous. Despite this fact, specialists are still needed, workers in professions that belong to the high-risk group. So how to take care of yourself, your colleagues and the environment? Special occupational health and safety trainings can be of help, which will allow you to acquire skills to prevent situations threatening health and life. Such training also means learning how to deal with threats in the event of their occurrence. Do not risk and read now how to choose a training that can save your health and life not only for you!

Who is occupational health and safety training addressed to?

In the offers of many training companies, a special invitation to health and safety training is addressed to employees and managers of workplaces with above-ground and underground tanks and closed spaces, companies that repair and maintain tanks.

BUT!

The main addressees of the training are people who perform particularly dangerous work. What does this mean exactly? How to check if our profession also belongs to this category?

Particularly dangerous professions - characteristics

When you hear the term "particularly hazardous work", many professions that involve working at high altitudes or working with hazardous materials come to mind. The catalog of professions with a particular degree of danger is much broader. It includes works such as:

• construction, demolition, renovation and assembly works carried out without stopping the operation of the workplace or its part;
• in tanks, canals, interior of technical devices and other dangerous closed spaces;
• when using hazardous materials;
• inside the furnace chambers of boilers, flue gas ducts, electrostatic precipitators, boiler drums, bunkers, channels and hoppers, and in liquid and gaseous fuel tanks;
• inside the bunkers of coal, coal dust, slag and ash and other tanks and rooms in which there may be poisonous, corrosive, asphyxiant, flammable or explosive gases or liquids;
• maintenance, modernization and repair of power devices that are under voltage;
• related to the identification and cutting of power cables.

These are just some of the professions that are particularly dangerous. If you still do not know whether your position also requires specialist OHS training, then the regulation of the Minister of Economy and Labor on training in the field of occupational health and safety (Journal of Laws of 2004, No. 180, item 1860 with d.). This legal act mainly defines:

 Health and safety training and the obligations of the employer

Health and safety training is regulated by law. This is stated in the above-mentioned regulation, namely § 15 sec. 1. In the indicated fragment we read that periodic training of workers employed in blue-collar positions is carried out in the form of training, at least once every 3 years. However, in positions where particularly dangerous work is performed, employees undergo such training at least once a year! At this point, it is worth paying attention to the obligations of the employer in this matter - ultimately, it is he who decides the frequency and duration of periodic training for employees performing work considered as particularly dangerous. The employer determines, after consultation with employees or their representatives, the frequency and duration of periodic training for employees working in specific positions, taking into account the type and conditions of performing work in these positions.

The employer is obliged to establish and update a list of particularly hazardous work in his workplace. In addition, the employer's obligations in the field of health and safety include:

• defining detailed health and safety requirements,
• ensuring direct supervision over this work by persons designated for this purpose; appropriate security measures,
• instructing employees as to the personal division of labor and the order of performing tasks,
• ensuring that only authorized and properly instructed persons have access to places of performance of this type of work.

What will we learn on a specialist OHS course?

On the market of training companies, there are more and more offers that offer health and safety courses for people who perform particularly dangerous work. On an example SPA Operators Training Center, you can briefly define the purpose of the training - to familiarize the Participants with the duties of management and employees in connection with works that are classified as particularly dangerous. Training participants take part in two modules:

THEORETICAL - in this part, participants will learn about the concepts of occupational health and safety, labor law and accidents at work, as well as current legal regulations, including rights and obligations of employers and employees; preventive health care for employees or health and safety training.

PRACTICAL - now it's time to put into practice the knowledge gained during the lectures! Participants will have the opportunity to identify and classify events, identify and classify accident hazards, and will acquire the ability to prepare post-accident documentation based on descriptions of events prepared by the lecturer. Moreover, everyone will have the opportunity to exercise the ability to discipline employees to comply with health and safety regulations and rules and to enforce their violations.

What are the benefits of training?

Although it seems that the benefits of participating in OSH training are obvious, it is worth recalling and listing them again.

• transferring knowledge that has a direct impact on the safety of people performing this type of work, as well as the entire environment,
• awareness of the managerial staff about the legal responsibility for employees performing this type of work.
• obtaining specimens of documentation required for carrying out particularly dangerous works.
• reduction of risks when performing particularly dangerous works.
• shortening the time of these works.
• reduction in the statistics of fatal, serious and collective accidents.
• care for the health and life of people employed in the workplace.