The Industry Is Talking About Competence. The Gap Is Still There.

If you spend any time talking to people in construction at the moment, one word keeps coming up.

Competence.

It’s not new, but it is getting more attention than it used to.

That’s partly down to the Building Safety Act, and partly because organisations are being asked to show more clearly that people going onto site actually understand the risks they’re working around.

On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated.

There are a lot of professionals going onto site

Most sites today aren’t just trade-based environments. You’ve got engineers, architects, surveyors, consultants and project managers all attending site at different stages of a project.

They might not be there every day, but they still need to demonstrate site competence.

In many cases, this now means completing a recognised health and safety course or following a professional CSCS route.

The gap is still bigger than people think

What’s interesting is how many of those professionals have actually gone through a recognised route to demonstrate that competence. It’s lower than most people expect.

That’s not because people don’t care about safety.

It’s usually because traditional certification routes have not always felt relevant to professional roles.

So what tends to happen is:

People rely on experience

They rely on their professional qualification

They assume that’s enough, until someone asks for evidence.

That’s where things have changed

A few years ago, that approach might have been accepted.

Now, it’s less comfortable.

If something goes wrong, the conversation changes very quickly.

It’s no longer about how experienced someone is.

It’s about whether they were competent in a way that can be demonstrated.

That’s where professional CSCS certification and structured health and safety training come into focus.

Training has not always kept up

Most health and safety training routes were built around trade roles.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But professional roles are different.

The way they interact with site, the risks they’re exposed to, and the decisions they make aren’t the same.

So applying the same route to everyone doesn’t always work in practice.

What I’m seeing organisations do

The firms that seem to be ahead of this are not overcomplicating it.

They’re asking a few practical questions:

How do we make this consistent across teams?

How do we make it relevant to professional roles?

How do we evidence competence if required?

And then they build something around that.

Where something like Accredex fits

The CIC-developed professional CSCS course was designed to address this gap.

It gives professionals a way to:

Work through relevant health and safety content

Complete certification online

Demonstrate competence clearly

Support application for a CSCS card where required

The reality

Its not replacing existing routes. It’s about recognising that the workforce has changed, and making sure the way we certify people keeps up.

Competence isn’t going away as a topic. If anything, it’s becoming more visible.

So the question most organisations are starting to ask is simple.

If someone from our team steps onto site tomorrow, are we comfortable explaining why they’re competent to be there?