Since ISHCCO was founded in 2003 it has been working on the development of such a catalogue of criteria for the promotion and acceptance of qualification framework of Health and Safety Coordinators (HSC). This framework should meet the European and national requirements for those engaged in the activity as Health and Safety Coordinator (HSC) and, as well, international requirements. The system developed by ISHCCO should enable benchmarking based on technical standards, on international and national criteria.
For these reasons the decision was made to deduce quality criteria from the European legislation and from respective national implementations and support these with already established professional and international standards of the European Qualification Framework (EQF). The EQF is based on the idea of lifelong learning as central thought and builds on the basis of eight levels as a comparative framework. EQF enables, irrespective of autonomous, institutional or informal learning, a comparability of qualifications of an individual (in this case of the Health and Safety Coordinator (HSC)). The qualification framework is divided in three criteria for knowledge, skills and attitudes referring to the individual qualifications.
The ISHCCO Qualification Framework (IQF) based on specific criteria for HSC and places these in relation with the requirements and tasks of related EU directives and of national regulations and with EQF. In this detailed work the existing and accepted criteria from the area of HSC professionals were examined and compared with the contents of the European Directive 92/57 EU that defines the HSC minimum requirements. The types of projects considered in the IQF include requirements for simple projects, medium building construction and civil engineering projects and highly specialized construction projects or major projects. IQF complies with the EQF requirements at an international level to provide a system for the individuals to be accepted as Health and Safety Coordinator (HSC) by institutions, companies, educational and training organizations in Europe and rest of the world.
