Health and Safety
Health and Safety tests whether you can plan work so that nobody is exposed to danger, and prove it on paper. Questions arrive as scenarios: a consumer unit change in an occupied flat, a trench to an outbuilding, or work in a plant room. Marks go to candidates who name the specific hazard, apply the hierarchy of control, and state who is responsible for what.
The framework
- Risk assessment: hazard, persons at risk, existing controls, likelihood and severity, further controls, residual risk, review date. It must be specific to the task, not a generic form.
- Hierarchy of control: eliminate, substitute, engineer the risk out, then a safe system of work; PPE is the last line of defence, never the only one.
- Competence: training, knowledge and experience matched to the task, with supervision for trainees; no unaccompanied work on or near live conductors.
- Method statement and, for higher-risk work, a permit to work authorised and signed off by a named person.
Hazards you must name
- Electric shock, arc flash and burns, and the secondary injury from a fall after a shock.
- Asbestos in old board mountings, partition walls and chases; silica dust from chasing; lead paint.
- Buried and concealed services before drilling or digging; strikes on water, gas and telecoms.
- Manual handling of boards, drums and four-core armoured cable; working at height; hot works and fire.
- Occupants, children and other vulnerable people; pets; lone working.
Emergency arrangements
First aid provision and a trained first aider, the nearest AED, the location of the isolation point, and the accident reporting route, including notification of specified incidents to the national labour inspectorate. Everyone on site must know how to kill the supply.
Worked example
Consumer unit replacement in an occupied flat. Hazards: live meter tails, dust, possible asbestos in the mounting, trip hazards, a vulnerable occupant. Controls: isolate and lock off at the origin, prove dead, asbestos survey before chasing, dust extraction and sheeting, cable ramps, occupant relocated, full test before re-energisation. The tails from the supplier fuse stay live and sealed: you cannot isolate them, so the control is to exclude that task, shroud them, and work no further upstream than the main switch. Naming the hazard you cannot control and excluding it is what earns the mark.
Traps
Generic risk assessments; wear PPE given as the only control; forgetting the public and the occupant; no emergency or reporting arrangements; no review after the job changes; signing a permit without personally verifying the isolation.