The All Knowing Perfect Safety Specialist

By James Parkinson from www.safety-consultant.com.au

Just for the record, someone challenged me to write this. It’s just great to have a mentor and they do not know how much they are mentoring me or if they even know they are my mentor. Thanks.

I was on a job a few months back and in one of the daily safety meetings that we had I was told by another person that I was just a Safety Advisor and they were a Safety Specialist and knew far more then Safety Advisor would.

Well this put my mind into overdrive mode and I desperately wanted to know more about what a Safety Specialist is and what kind of studies I need to undertake to become one. See, I know I have this bad habit of wanting to be a perfectionist but that never seems to happen. But hey, I think everyone needs to have a goal just mine will most likely never happen. (Striving for Progress not Perfection.) With me being just a Safety Advisor, as I was told, I have only completed a WHSO ( Work Health and Safety Officer ) and I’ve done a Cert IV in Health and Safety as well.

After the meeting I approached this person and asked them what courses did one need to undertake to become one of these Safety Specialists, that he said he was. Well, as my luck would have it, he had the same certification that I already had. So I asked: “well how did you become a Safety Specialist who would come to more know then just a Safety Advisor such as myself?”. (I guess some where along the line here I should add in that I also have about 40 years in the construction industry not that it means a lot but I may have learned a couple things along the way.)….

So this person was hired by a firm that I was sub-contracted to. They didn’t have Safety Advisor function in their hierarchy so he automatically became a Safety Specialist. I thought to myself at that point that, since I was a business owner as well and, that if what I do in safety and risk is all based on the title that one has, then I should likewise change my title from a Safety Advisor to something like:

SAFETY SPECIALIST / SAFETY CONSULTANT / SAFETY DIRECTOR / VP SAFETY / CEO – SAFETY CONSULTING – SOUTH PACFIC REGION / ACCREDITED METAL FUSIOLIGIST

So I have to wonder, since I now have this title, is there anything else I need to learn about this Safety stuff or have I covered it all and reached my goal as a perfectionist by simply changing my title?.

Regards

James Parkinson – +61 407 0270 392

james@safety-consultant.com.au www.safety-consultant.com.au