Unannounced audits, self-policing, and why the best contractors examine what they do well, not just what goes wrong.
Ours is a licensed industry, and that word carries real weight. We operate within clearly defined boundaries and are subject to unannounced audits from both the HSE and our trade association. There is no notice and nowhere to hide. Everything is scrutinised, from personnel to how we work both outside and inside the enclosure. The expectation is that we are right, effectively, on every project. If we are not, we are held accountable.
The HSE cannot be everywhere, though. They are one organisation with limited resources and ever-increasing pressure on funding, so what they ask of licensed contractors is that we are self-policing. That means reviewing what we do constantly. Not just putting right the things that go wrong, but looking honestly at ourselves when we are not the best version of ourselves and working out how to make sure the same issues do not recur. The part people forget is that self-policing also means examining the good. When a job goes really well, understand why and instil that in the areas you need to improve. The approach that made the good work good is often the very thing missing elsewhere.
On standards more broadly, I think training in our industry is higher than it has ever been, and it keeps climbing. Technology has moved on alongside it, and there is a constant drive to ask what we can do next and what we can do better. ARCA is central to that, particularly its training committee, and it is a big part of why the bar keeps rising. The honest challenge we do have is not standards; it is people. Between Brexit and COVID, a lot of skilled personnel left the industry or returned home, and recovery has been slow. In a licensed trade where everyone has to be trained and competent, that shortage bites, and there is not enough youth coming through to replace them. It is not the most glamorous work, putting on a full face mask and going into an enclosure to strip a class one carcinogen, but it is vital, and the demand is not going anywhere.
That wider view is one I take seriously. I have been elected to ARCA twice, and from October I will take the chair. That role lets me look at the industry as a whole rather than just our own business, understand the pressures other member companies are under, and use what I have learned over my career to ease those pressures and lift the standard generally. It benefits Spectra too, of course, but the aim is bigger than any one contractor: a licensed industry that holds itself to account and keeps getting better at it.
