This Code of Practice is designed to help companies assess and maintain
the competence of their engineering staff particularly in safety
critical areas and industries. It sets out the competencies expected and
evidence required to prove competence in specific tasks and helps
organisations create schemes for monitoring and measuring the
competencies of its employees. Human error is still recognised as the
most frequent cause of problems and the field of safety critical systems
and functional safety continues to develop along with the complexity of
systems.
The purpose of the Code of Practice is:
To help organisations with creating or developing a scheme for assessing
the competence of people and teams undertaking safety critical functions
To demonstrate to clients that an organisation has the necessary
competence to undertake particular activities and that a recognised
competence measurement scheme has been used
To provide clear levels of expertise and competence required prior to
recruiting engineers in safety critical roles. And subsequently for
appraising / training those personnel
To help in implementing an overall competence management system (CMS)
for an engineering division or organisation
To comply with regulatory requirements/relevant standards, showing duty
of care and compliance to regulations and EU directives (specifically
IEC 61508 and HSE requirements)
To provide evidence of best practice and high levels of competence to
any industry regulator and to avoid potential litigation
