1 MAINTAINING EXPLOSIVES SAFETY COMPETENCE IN THE UK AND EUROPEAN EXPLOSIVES SECTOR

Explosives accidents have claimed the lives of more than a thousand people around the world since the turn of the Millennium. Added to the loss of life has been the significant loss of defence capability and infrastructure. Many of the accidents have been caused not by failure of design, but by human failure. Much of the human failure can be attributed to the lack of competencies, skills and adequate training of the people concerned. The presentation will describe some of the initiatives being taken in the UK and in the European Union to ensure that workers in the explosives community have the skills and competencies required to safely sustain activities involving explosives. It will describe the development and evolution of a range of National Occupational Standards for all personnel employed in explosives occupations. It will outline the qualifications framework being developed to generate and maintain the standards and finally, the presentation will refer to some of the novel training approaches which ar