As a professional, you are expected to know everything about your chosen occupation.
However, it is not possible, especially when there are so many different industries and facts and things to consider within those industries.
The important thing to understand is what you don’t know!
For example, my latest contract involves a leisure complex with a swimming pool, we all know that water is a hazardous substance, some of you may be thinking, we drink water, surely it can’t be hazardous. If you Google “how many people drown in the UK each year” you will get a result of 400 and a further 200 use it to take their own life.
I know water is hazardous, I know Chlorine is used in swimming pool water to kill bacteria, but, I didn’t know how chlorine is added to the water, I also know that Chlorine is a nasty chemical and can cause many undesirable effects when undiluted, so, new job, new experience, new critical chemical for safety that is dangerous to handle.
The important thing is, I knew that I didn’t have enough knowledge in a certain area, so I researched it, I googled, “chlorine in swimming pools”, and I went to the HSE website to get information that is approved by the governing body for safety at work.
From this, I learnt that I needed a PSOP, a Pool Safety Operating Procedure, so I used the website advised by the HSE website and googled to find other companies’ versions.
Being equipped with this information I went to my leisure centre complex and ask to have a look at their PSOP, I was purposely vague in asking for this document, and I asked different people when they were on duty, not to catch them out but to see if they knew about it, I was pleased that everyone I asked knew of the document, not everyone knew where it was stored, but I was OK with that (for reasons that will be covered in another post).
I researched this extensively, and I now believe I have a good knowledge of chlorine injectors, automatic dosing, ph balancing, etc. but I am not an expert! to become an expert I need to work alongside the people who do it on a daily basis, I need to understand, what they do, why they do it, when they do it and how they do it.
There are things that need to change to make it safe enough to meet my standards and I will work on that, however, I will get the true experts to work alongside me when making the changes, I am not going to tell an expert what to do, I will ask the experts questions so they think about certain areas in a different way, using their expertise and my skills in COSHH, manual handling, confined space and lone working.
To anyone going swimming today, to you it is just a dip or a bit of exercise, behind the scenes is a mass of electrochemical handling and constant testing and adjusting to make sure it is perfectly safe for you.