How many of you do refresher courses?

[Quickthorn]

if you are an employer, and not a limited company, you can have your licence endorsed if an employee is found to be at fault in an accident.

 

 

Whaaat?? Are you sure about this?

[Mesterh]

Owning a business in this country means your a target to get taxed by everyone.

 

We pay more for insurances, water,electricity gas business rates, banking etc etc so paying every 5 years to keep up with my certs is something I don't do.

 

No doubt I will have to retake my driving license again soon because I drive a commercial vehicle!

 

No doubt I could learn a new thing or two, especially about rigging, but well I suppose that's what Arbtalk's for, and it's free.

[slack ma girdle]

Having done a number of refresher courses, i have found them handy for picking up on bad habits that tend to creep in. And with all things techniques inprove/ change, sometime even for the better.

Currently going through Lantra assessment to become a trainer, so i am have to re-learn to get back up to speed, which will hopefully improve my techniques.

However i do agree with roseyweb

pfffft

I started learning after I passed

[Taupotreeman]

Used to do 6 monthly first aid and electrical awerness refreshers but haven't done one for a while. Never done any form of climbing refresher but was always learning new stuff when the new guys came on board with more up to date techniques. Since I've been out on my own the only learning I do is either from web videos or things posted on here or from mistakes (learning the hard way). I don't think they run too many refresher courses in NZ as such and if the electrical awareness stuff is anything to go by they'd be pretty expensive. Some of the bigger outfits have their own in house training but once you've past your exams etc there's nothing after. Just a case of getting on a crew with guys that have experience in various aspects of the job, e.g. moving from a utility crew to a municipal crew to a land clearing crew. Some of the cross credit training here was a bit of a joke whereby guys that couldn't even climb a tree had their quals endorsed with tickets to do crane and helicopter work.

[Danavan]

Only on rescue & 1st aid. The rest can rest....

[AA Teccie (Paul)]

Whaaat?? Are you sure about this?

 

Hi 'Quickthorn',

 

Yup, it's called vicarious responsibility. Principally it would be applied if your employees were driving whilst disqualified (do you check their licences regularly?) but it could equally apply if a driver was found to be negligent in an acident and that was traced back to you as the employer not providing them with adequate training, and possibly refreshre training. This would particularly apply where they were driving unfamiliar vehciles, i.e. tractors / Unimogs, but also 3.5 tonners with trailers when they drive only cars usually.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to be alarmist but it's worth bearing in mind.

 

Paul

[Quickthorn]

Hi 'Quickthorn',

 

Yup, it's called vicarious responsibility. Principally it would be applied if your employees were driving whilst disqualified (do you check their licences regularly?) but it could equally apply if a driver was found to be negligent in an acident and that was traced back to you as the employer not providing them with adequate training, and possibly refreshre training. This would particularly apply where they were driving unfamiliar vehciles, i.e. tractors / Unimogs, but also 3.5 tonners with trailers when they drive only cars usually.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to be alarmist but it's worth bearing in mind.

 

Paul

 

Thanks for that, paul (I think..). I see your point now. I only had one employee ever drive my vehicles. he seemed good enough, and there were no accidents, but I must admit I don't think I did check his licence and I didn't give him any training. At the time, we could be doing 3 hrs driving a day getting to and from site, and it seemed the safest and most responsible thing to do was to share the driving rather than have me do all of it every day.

[AA Teccie (Paul)]

Thanks for that, paul (I think..). I see your point now. I only had one employee ever drive my vehicles. he seemed good enough, and there were no accidents, but I must admit I don't think I did check his licence and I didn't give him any training. At the time, we could be doing 3 hrs driving a day getting to and from site, and it seemed the safest and most responsible thing to do was to share the driving rather than have me do all of it every day.

 

Absolutely, and sharing the load (or driving) is a sensible thing to do BUT you need to ensure the other chap is eligible to drive, i.e. has a valid licence, and ideally some form of training if driving anything differnt to a car (I guess this could reasonably be 'in-house' training by yourself as an experineced driver / 'trailer tower').

 

We advise contractors, ideally, to take an annual copy of driving licences and, whilst acknolwedging it may seem OTT and levaing it to the manager's discretion, get them to sign an anula statement confimring "I am eligible to drive, not being banned, and this is a true copy of my one and only driving licence". We advise this as some get a copy of their licence from DVLA before points are added.

 

Cheers..

Paul

[combined tree services]

to be honest i would considder going on refresher courses if they were aimed at guys that have been in the game for a few years and if they were reasonably priced . Recently i went away and finally did my assessment for UA2.1,2.2,2.3 when i recieved my all new flimsy ticket i noticed that the certification only lasts for 3 years now i dont know about you guys but for the kind of money we are paying to get trained and certificated by NPTC (who have the market pretty well sewn up and can make the rules up to suit) i dont expect to be told that the cert is no use after 2013 .

[Old WoodChip]

hear hear,,,,,,,,I dont need a course on,,learning to walk,,learning to balance,,,,,,or common sense,,,,,,,

 

so so true, H&S is getting way out of proportion

I recently had to do a risk assessment for the FC, what a total load of bollocks that was:sneaky2: talk about making work for the men in suits sat at a desk.

Get them out in the wind & rain & snow & ice:thumbup1:

And everyone get back to like it used to be where you relied on your common sense.

 

Stay safe:001_smile: