NEBOSH Best Candidate making a big difference in his workplace
Case Study: Iain Wood - Exova
Dr Iain Wood’s career track record is certainly impressive. 49 year old Iain works for Exova, a global testing business which employs 4,300 people. Iain works in the Oil, Gas and Industrials division, which has labs spread across the UK, Holland and Italy. The division primarily looks at the destructive testing of metals.
Coming from a chemist background, Iain initially worked in Facilities Engineering as an Environmental Manager. Iain first joined Exova as a Quality Manager. However as he already held the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety, his boss asked if he also wanted to take on health and safety responsibilities for the division.
“I welcomed it with open arms.” said Iain. “Primarily, the labs I am responsible for carry out destructive testing. Anything from hitting things with a very big hammer to exposing materials to H2S (hydrogen sulfide), which is toxic even at low levels and can quite easily kill people.”
As well as the NEBOSH National General Certificate, Iain had also taken the NEBOSH Environmental Diploma in the past. The National Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety was the perfect next move and his employers agreed.
“When I was given the opportunity to do the health and safety role here, what I didn’t want to do was give out poor advice to the guys on site, so I suggested that I went on and did the NEBOSH Diploma. One of the guys in my old employment had done the Diploma and said it was hard work but a really useful qualification to get because of the knowledge gained.”
Iain’s hard work certainly paid off as he achieved the highest mark for Unit D of the National Diploma for 2015/16 and picked up the award at the 2016 NEBOSH Graduation and Awards Ceremony at the University of Warwick. For Unit D, candidates are required to carry out a detailed review of health and safety performance in a workplace and produce an action plan for improvement. The aim is to demonstrate competent application of knowledge and understanding gained from other units of the degree-equivalent qualification.
Iain is already applying the knowledge he has gained to his workplace through his role as Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental (HSQE) Manager. “To be honest it has been fantastic. I have been able to take that knowledge and apply that practically in the workplace. It is interesting just looking at the improvements and the risk assessments we are doing. The first aids this year have gone down in our sector by 30% and you know that sort of thing is really heart-warming because we are really addressing things. We are now trying to get anyone with health and safety responsibilities trained up to at least NEBOSH Certificate level. Keeping people safe at work is imperative and requires good basic knowledge at the very least.”
Iain loves his role. “I love the fact that I have got nine different labs, I love the fact that there are different cultures in a lot of the labs. There is a difference between the lab in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Manchester and so on. You know we’ve got two labs either side of Birmingham and there are very different set-ups in both. So it’s really interesting.”
Congratulations on your award Iain, keep up the good work!