There’s perhaps never been a more apposite time to consider Health & Safety at work – especially in our industry, with ever-growing turbines. We caught up with the latest thinking, and opportunities for training.
Working high up in a wind turbine nacelle offers a spectacular view no matter if you are onshore or offshore, but few will contest that it is a working environment with inherent risks. The need for safety training for the industry has been obvious from the beginning.
The wind energy industry is a young industry and an internationally acknowledged safety standard has only just been introduced. Until now national safety standards have worked alongside company specific standards. Although this has worked fine until now, the international nature of the industry has made it a challenge for the industry to keep its personnel in compliance.
The Global Wind Organization (GWO), a confederation of major wind industry players, has developed an industry safety training standard based on actual incident/accident statistics within the industry. With the GWO certificate, a person will be approved to work for GWO member companies.
We see this development as a huge benefit for the industry which can maintain a high level of safety and improve flexibility within the sector enormously.
In order to give the wind industry easy access to the GWO course, Falck Safety Services has been approved to deliver the course in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and United Kingdom and more countries will follow. The course can be taken for onshore or offshore work, with the Sea Survival course as the differentiating factor.
The nature of the wind power industry often requires that personnel are trained on short notice. In order to meet that requirement we have started to offer training in evenings and weekends. Furthermore our strong presence globally, especially around the North Sea enables us utilise our combined resources to offer our clients the training within the required time frame.
In some countries like the United Kingdom, getting two different courses like the GWO and the course accredited by Renewable UK, gives you higher flexibility. To reduce the time needed to acquire the two certificates, Falck Safety Services UK offers a SGS accredited course that delivers certificates after successfully completing a combined course.
Our comprehensive product portfolio also serves to help our client’s personnel becoming compliant efficiently by bundling the basic safety training with courses such as rigger/banksman slinger courses at the same location.
Part of the training can even be performed at the client’s premises provided that the facilities allows for safe and realistic completion of the training.
