4August 2003

First students in UK to take internet based
CITB Health and Safety Test

Building One Stop Shop (BOSS), part ofBrent in2work, a regeneration project set up to encourage the employment oflocal people through training on the new Wembley Stadium, will this week be thefirst place in the UK to run the internet based CITB Health and Safety testsince its launch last month.

The internet Health and Safety testingfacility has been established at the BOSS office, based at The College of NorthWest London on Wembley Way, a two minute walk from the Wembley Stadium site.Without this facility workers would have had to travel approximately 10 milesto Watford, Hertfordshire, or over 8 miles to Uxbridge, Middlesex, to sit thetest.

David Hendrie, Director at Multiplex,the Main Contractor at Wembley, believes that this initiative will save hiscompany and its sub-contractors hundreds of lost man-hours because of thetraining facilitys close proximity to site.

He said: "This facility is a hugebonus and it is great to see industry and local community bodies workingtogether for mutual benefit. We anticipate that the internet based testingfacility in such close proximity to the site will be of great benefit to ourproject by increasing the number of workers who can take the test and bycutting the time needed off-site to do it. We expect this will have animmediate and prolonged positive impact by increasing safety awareness on theWembley site and future sites that these workers are employed on."

Thomson Prometric is contracted onbehalf of CITB to facilitate the health and safety test. For a company orcollege to become an approved test centre for Invigilated Internet BasedTesting (UK) they need to be CITB approved and submit their application to ThomsonPrometric. Once the testing centre is set up applicants would simply need tobook a place and sit the test under the supervision of an independentinvigilator provided by Thomson Prometric. For an information pack andapplication form to become an approved test centre go to: www.citb.co.uk/health_safety

David Nichols Health and Safety TestingProduct Manager at CITB said: "By providing access to the test over theinternet registered projects such as Wembley Stadium are able to have morecontrol over where and when their staff are health and safety tested. There isalso evidence from the pilot that the pass rate increases when candidates takethe test online, which may be down to feeling more comfortable in the familiarenvironment in which the tests are taken."

Laura Litherland ConstructionInitiatives Manager at Building One-Stop Shop said: "The scheme should beof great benefit to local people wishing to find employment on the Wembleydevelopment site and other large projects currently underway in our area. It isgreat that the facility has at last been made more accessible to those who needit"

John Bradshaw from the MajorContractors Group said: "This is an important step in improving theflexibility and availability of the Health & Safety Test. Internet basedtesting should help reduce the operative downtime experienced by attending theDriving Test Centres and therefore provide welcome savings to allemployers."