Skills to safely manage education estates

Inconsistent competence levels in estates and health and safety management is leaving schools vulnerable. Drawing on two decades of experience, Stuart McGregor, director of operations at NASPM, urges schools to review their estates management training

Many years ago my mentor said I must always work within my limitations, especially in health and safety. At that time, it didn’t really mean anything; moving forward 20 years it means everything! As a very active health and safety school auditor and accident investigator, there is a themed finding across the nation of different ‘levels’ of health and safety knowledge and competence. This includes estates management staff and those around them including estates teams, school business managers and head teachers, all of which have key compliance responsibilities and duty holder roles.

The amount of times I have gone back to a school to complete their new Fire Risk Assessment or Health and Safety Audit, and been told that the school’s ‘contractor said’ that the school didn’t have to follow certain recommendations in the FRA/HS Audit because of various reasons. Upon review the contractor’s input had not been helpful or correct and has delayed the recommendations being completed. The important fact is that in the event of any significant incident or accident the reference to contractor guidance is irrelevant unless it is in the form of an additional report and deemed suitable.

Professional development

The school setting will have a collective amount of key staff with specific school experience and expertise, and really importantly, it is site specific. Competence includes experience, knowledge, skills and qualifications. The estates management journey hopefully will focus on continued professional development, which may include courses and qualifications although sometimes this becomes stagnant and not deemed important or not supported. Adding the time resource and how busy the staff are can make this difficult to progress.

Also from my tutoring and mentoring in schools, the learning requirements are often a challenge as some staff may find classroom learning with an exam at the end extremely frightening and fearful, whilst others enjoy the experience and do very well. The fact is that most training around health safety and estates are not school related, and very much a theory without the hands on practical experience.

We know that the HASAWA 1974 requires the employer to provide training, supervision and relevant information, and that the MHS Regulations 1999 requires the employer to ensure that they provide staff with adequate health and safety training, in addition to specific legislation that will demand training such as working at height, manual handling, asbestos management, and legionella as some key school areas.     

Review your training

My common finding and concern that this article is leading to is the quality of this training and the assurance of competence. I challenge you to review your health safety estates and compliance management training with the following considerations; What training headings do you have? This should be in the form of a training matrix. Does this include all of your key staff/estates staff? How do you deliver this training? If I am right, most of this will be in the form of an e-learning package, maybe mixed in with some additional face to face or other training.

An audit of e-learning

Focusing on the e-learning training, complete a mini audit of the training. Start with the headings and time taken to complete data. For example, I completed a recent training audit at a large trust and all of the estates teams completed their legionella training within 19 minutes. When asked the host some questions around the L8, it was very clear that they were not competent ‘enough’ to manage legionella.

You should also review the percentage of compliance and how many times it took to pass. Review the times of the training and any concerns. For example, at a cleaning company I audited, the part time cleaners were scoring 100 per cent across the e-learning and their manager informed me that this would not be expected. The concern was that this was being completed by a family member.

Ask yourself, are you setting too much e-learning training? Again, after a school audit, I advised the school/trust that completing 16 training sessions every year is not deemed necessary based on their risk assessments and that most of the estates management training could be completed on a cycle of every three years and then enable them to manage their time resource and also look at additional key face to face training.

Don’t forget about important training for practical works such as manual handling and working at height. Although most of the school works may be deemed as a low risk outcome, these key activities have the potential to cause some very serious accidents and incidents. Therefore, the competent role is required. Not following the training standards for manual handling could result in a member of staff harming themselves with significant injures. Same for working at height – the competent role is vital, experience is only good if this is having safe working practices.

A complex role

The estates management role is a complex one that will often be dealing with operational issues while being strategic. The focus on safe working practices is in addition to the legal requirements of ensuring that the buildings are compliant. This often depends on others, such as contractors to provide information – and having contractors often creates a dynamic that is sometimes out of your control. Contractors can let you down with cancellations or poor works and unsafe acts. In the world of ISOs, the competent person role includes a file with the key identified staff together with their key qualifications, training and also a focus on continuous professional development. I encourage schools to complete this to assist in the assurance and key development.

The classic concerns include the CDM regulations 2015 and the specific requirements within the six duty holder roles, and that how many estates staff have a good understanding of the CDM regulations. Project management competence is often an area that is missed in qualifications or training within the school. Is the training provision a tick box exercise? How good is the e-learning training? Do you have a competence gap? The whole health and safety management system is based on people, and a very high percentage of accidents and non compliance are aligned to staff, either not paying attention or not being competent in their work.  

Know your limitations and also know the limitations of your staff; it is so important! I recall interviewing managers following fatal incidents over the years with a common theme that they didn’t know much about the area they were managing! They had been moved sideways to manage areas, being on secondment from redundant roles. Looking back at past near misses and accidents, a themed finding is a school not reviewing their risk assessments and control measures which referred to having suitable training and competent staff.