Company Announcement - The formal registration of Construction Health and Safety practitioners is being delayed by apathy, incorrect methods of application and non-payment, Doug Michell, Master Builders Association North Construction Health & Safety Manager, has cautioned.

The purposes of registration are focused on control and regulation and sets out:
• To establish a comprehensive mechanism for the evaluation and assessment of applicants;
• Draw up a Code of Conduct to regulate the behaviour of registered construction Health and Safety agents;
• Maintain a national register of such accredited agents;
• Provide Continuing Professional Development in construction Health and Safety; and
• Measure and monitor the impact of Health and Safety in the construction industry.

A registered construction Health and Safety agent would be a person with at least five years’ experience in the construction sector who has been assessed by the SACPCMP Council as competent to provide HSE services in accordance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and applicable construction regulations Michell explains: “The benefits of registration are many and include the fact that clients would be able to select competent agents and have recourse if the agent proves incompetent. There will also be means of disciplining non-compliant professionals, and clients will have the assurance that their building work will be done to the best practices with the professionals’ own reputation at stake in any given project. 

“However, the number of applications for registration are not looking promising at the moment. In fact, if the construction industry is to have sufficient number of registered H&S practitioners by the date set for enforcement - August 2015 - there would have to be a major and dramatic upsurge in interest. The SA Council for Project and Construction Management Professionals  has estimated that South Africa would need about 3 500 registered H&S practitioners by July 2015 - and we are nowhere near that total at present.

“In July 2014, as many as 63% of the application packs that had been received were incomplete, or had documentation outstanding, or had unpaid registration fees – often a combination of both. This brings the registration process to a complete standstill: an application cannot ‘partially’ be processed,” Michell explained. “Another factor that had disrupted the registration progress was that some potential applicants had hoped that ‘exemption notices’ published by the Department of Labour would not merely represent a ‘roll-out period of grace’ the Department had intended, but signified that the entire registration exercise would probably just be scrapped.”

Michell said that to ensure that as many of the 3 500 registrations have been completed – or are at least in progress – SACPCMP had, in consultation with the Department of Labour, drafted an implementation plan to assist applicants.
Elements of the implementation plan include:

• Increasing the pool of competent assessors to expedite the registration process for all categories in a professional manner;
• Increasing the number of competent examination invigilators/markers;
• Staging “Routes to registration” workshops nationally with particular focus on the CHSO category;
• Targeting clients/developers to provide information-sharing workshops to promote the objectives of the CHS registration process; and
• Identifying suitable venues so that examination and interviews can be decentralised.
“There is no doubt that registration will raise the profile of the H&S profession, boost interest in it and attract better practitioners. Continuing Professional Development will ensure that professionals are kept up to date with the latest information pertaining to their scope of responsibilities. We can but hope that the registration process would have reached the required level by August this year,” he added.