nebosh unit d examiners paper

Occupational safety and health management systems (OSHMS) form the cornerstone of any organisation’s attempt to comply with the requirements of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, business risk management principles.

As with any management system, an OSHMS needs to be fully integrated into the normal organisational and operational processes of the organisation. In his report on guidance for company directors on their obligations under the Combined Code, Nigel Turnbull used the term “embedded”, that’s to say they should be built in, not bolted on.
All management systems in the areas of quality, environment, business resilience and health and safety follow a similar framework, US management guru William Edwards Deming’s plan-do-check-act (PDCA) model, and all such systems have continual improvement as their goal.
While health and safety management systems theory is mainly covered in Unit A, Element A1.2 of the NEBOSH National Diploma syllabus, Introduction to Health and Safety Management, the main place candidates are asked to show their understanding of OSHMS is in Unit D Assignment, where they have to carry out a detailed review of the health and safety performance of a workplace or organisation and produce an action plan to improve performance.
NEBOSH has produced detailed guidance and information on what the examiners are looking for. This comes complete with an assignment log, an assignment quality standard checklist and, most helpful of all, the assignment mark scheme.
It also guides candidates on the structure and style of the report and explains the report is intended to show the candidate can apply the knowledge and understanding they have developed in Units A, B and C to a real workplace. It allows the candidate to conduct research and to demonstrate their ability to carry out a range of activities that would be expected of a health and safety practitioner.
The main aim of the assignment is to produce an overall review of the

References: are sources of information/data specifically referred to in the report. Bibliographies include any material used as background reading not specifically referred to in the text of the report but which were used in the report’s preparation. Both show evidence that sufficient research has been carried out to complete the assignment. Use should be made of a documented system such as the Harvard or Vancouver methods. Executive summary This is the last section of the report to be completed though, as noted, it should appear before the introduction. It is primarily aimed at providing any reader — including a non-specialist — with a concise overview of the important findings from the work, together with a summary of the main, linked conclusions and recommendations. It should clearly highlight the key facts and outcomes, and state the implications for the organisation, including a cost benefit analysis and a proposed course of action for the future. The summary is the only part of the report which is length limited: one side of A4 single-spaced Arial font (size 11). There are penalties for going over this limit: the maximum marks available reduce from 10 to six if a candidate goes up to 10% over limit, and then to four if they are between 10% and 20% over and finally to only two if they go more than 20% over. So in this last and critical part of the assignment, it pays to keep to the brief.