A critical assessment of the Australian OHS accreditation system's "Body of Knowledge (BoK)"

The Health and Safety Professionals Alliance (HaSPA ) Core Body of Knowledge for Generalist OHS Professionals was benchmarked against three other bodies of knowledge, the German Ergonomic Society’s Body of Knowledge Ergonomics ‐ Core Definition, Object Catalogue and Research Domains, the IEEE Computer Society Software Engineering Body of Knowledge and the Association of Schools of Public Health’s Master’s Degree in Public Health Core Competency Model. Benchmarking and a mind mapping ontology based gap analysis were used to compare the different approaches to systemize knowledge. It was found that quality, structure and content of the taxonomy delivered by the HaSPA were significantly inferior to the competitive field. The HaSPA body of knowledge ranked last with 2 points, compared to 14 points achieved by the German Ergonomic Society’s Body of Knowledge for Ergonomics and the IEEE Computer Society Software Engineering Body of Knowledge.