Our resident Environmental specialist and trainer John Binns, is on hand to answer questions about our new online NEBOSH Environmental Certificate course. Question & Answers with John Binns How do you find the experience of presenting content for online courses & have you done this before? I think this is the third time I have presented the content for an RRC environmental management course. So, I am becoming a bit of an old hand! When I started my career in environmental management I certainly didn’t expect to ever be filmed at any time doing my job. The first time I completed the filming I was a little nervous, but I…
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The First Step to a Career in Environmental Management
I can’t believe that I have been working as an environmental management consultant and trainer for twenty years. Much like a professional footballer who is playing in his early thirties (I wish) I have achieved veteran status! My career has had its up and downs over the years. But I do not regret it for one minute. When considering the content for this post I thought I would identify what can be more challenging from my experience than carrying out a job. And that is getting a job in environmental management in the first place. The problem is that in competitive job markets, in order to be successful you need…
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Thinking About a Career in Health and Safety?
Careering into it As a health and safety tutor I routinely meet people who already work in the field of occupational health and safety (OHS). And one thing that always strikes me is that they are a diverse bunch with a very wide range of ages, educational backgrounds, workplaces and work/ life experiences. From 21 to over normal retirement age. From left school at 16 with diddly-squat to PhDs in biomechanical engineering. From building society office to offshore oil and gas platform. From none at all to 35 years in the chemical engineering and manufacturing industries. And some of them have had life experiences that have made the hairs on…
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New Year’s Resolution; Less Harry Potter, More Gordon Gekko
It has become something of a tradition in our household to do a Harry Potter marathon (of sorts) over Christmas. i.e watch all eight films over eight consecutive evenings over the festive period. My daughters grew up with Harry. My youngest’s impression of Moaning Myrtle is exceptional (apparently my own “Expecto Patronum!” is quite good too). Spoiler alert Harry kills Voldemort at the end. Good conquers evil. Morality wins the day. The books and the films are so satisfying because the right and proper outcome is achieved. If only it was as simple in the world of occupational health and safety. Most of you will be familiar with the moral…
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Five New Year’s Resolutions for Environmental Practitioners
It that time of the year unfortunately, the festive season is over, winter is in full swing, at least if you are in the northern hemisphere and finances are generally low (at least until February!). However now is the time to set some environmental new year’s resolutions. In this post I’ve come up with a few ideas for environmental professionals. Some will be relevant to you, some not but at least it is a starting point, why not write your own list, but hopefully this will give you some ideas. Pick one impact that your organisation has on the environment, even something small and reduce this impact and tell people…
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It’s That Festive Time of The Year, Environmental Practitioners Let’s Be Positive!
It’s the time of the year when we all start to feel a bit happier than usual, holidays are on their way and as such we can all recharge our batteries and spend some time with our friends and family. I think it’s easy when you are involved in environmental management to be miserable. In some ways I wonder if I am in the business of gloom and doom, after all the process of training people about environmental management generally starts off with a long trawl through how humanity is destroying the environment. From climate change, to waste production to plastic pollution etc we seem to be having a significant…
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A Festive Quiz
Over the last year I have written a few blogs for RRC’s website. Most of these have been aimed squarely at students studying towards a NEBOSH health and safety qualification; though much of the advice in them is relevant to any course of study with a formal exam at the end. If you want a quick reminder of topics covered they have included: Revising and preparing for the exam (You make your own luck) Examination technique (Just read the instructions) Handwriting tips (Doctor’s handwriting) Studying as a distance learner (Studying as a distance learner – I know; not very creative – I was going to go with “The loneliness of…
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Hints and Tips to Gain a Good Mark for NEBOSH Environmental Diploma Project
In this post I thought that we could look at some good practices with regards to the NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management project (known as NDEM2). For this assessment NEBOSH require you to review and critic an organisations environmental management system (EMS). The assignment is required to be approximately 8000 words and must be submitted to NEBOSH electronically. The pass mark is 50%. The Guide Although what NEBOSH requires sounds relatively straight forward to interpret, in practice there is a very specific format with regards to issues that are required to be covered. Therefore, one of the first things you MUST do is to download and thoroughly read the NDEM2 assignment…
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Tackling The NEBOSH Unit DNI
The current versions of the NEBOSH National and International Diplomas in Occupational Health and Safety date from 2015 and the Unit DNI written assignment that accompanies both has been in use since February 2017. The Unit DNI (Unit D for National and International) assignment is very different to the old Unit D or ID used under the old syllabuses. Consequently if you followed the old guidance and wrote a Unit D report that might have passed under the old National syllabus you would not achieve a pass under the new system. This is because the content of your report would be completely wrong. The report writing skills that you have…
