Assessment of the Behavioural Component of Competency to Substantiate Practitioner Competency Claims

The competency of Safety Practitioners has given rise to a number of competency frameworks of varying levels of complexity, (HSE/IET/BCS, 2007, Rail Safety & Standards Board, AEA Technology, 2003). To date the focus has been on the content and structure of these frameworks, with respect to the criteria that must be satisfied to substantiate competency claims. Here we do not attempt to provide a competency framework or identify specific criteria for safety practitioners. Instead we focus on the question of how to assess an individual against any given framework. Existing schemes frequently attempt to assess against competency as a whole and employ a single assessment method that does not take account of a competency's multi-faceted structure. This can be overcome by assessing competency at the subcomponent level. We propose an approach to assess one subcomponent of competency, namely practitioner behaviour and provide evidence of the effectiveness of the approach.