NEBOSH Practical Assessment – Tips for your Success

The Practical assessment should be the easiest part of the exam – you are not under exam conditions and can take your time to make sure you get it right first time.

There are 2 parts to the assessment:

1. The Observation sheets, and
2. The report to management.

The Observation Sheets are worth 30 marks – this is half of the marks you need to pass. You need to look around your workplace for hazards and note them down.

Look for 25 – 30 hazards and note them down in Column 1.

For each hazard you must include a CONSEQUENCE, in other words the Unwanted effect.

For every hazard you must give an IMMEDIATE Action with a timescale of 2 days or less, and a LONGER TERM action – see example of an overloaded circuit

Immediate action – unplug some of the appliances – timescale within 30 minutes.

Longer term action – fit more sockets – timescale 3 weeks.

Write the Immediate and Longer term actions in Column 2 and the timescales in Column 3.

The Report for Management is worth – 70 marks and needs to be organised under the following headings:

Introduction, Executive summary, Main findings, Conclusion and Recommendations

The Introduction worth 5 marks – you need to write a word picture of your organisation – its purpose, number of employees, activities taking place during the inspection, equipment in use at the time of the inspection.

The Executive summary worth 5 marks – complete this after you have written the rest of the report as it is a Summary of:

1. The Conclusion
2. The Recommendations

The Main findings worth 30 marks – here you need to write about the significant hazards you have observed, give some details – you should also include actions that the employer take to reduce/remove the hazard and the consequences of a worker getting hurt if the action is not taken.

Do’s

• Write about, at least, 5 different hazards or groups of hazards eg put all fire hazards into one group and electrical hazards into another group.
• You should identify possible breaches of legislation and explain how the legislation has been breached.
• Explain the significance of not taking action by explaining legal, moral and financial implications.

Don’ts

• Use the same words as you used in in the Observation sheets to describe the hazards, give more details.
• Don’t just give the title of the legislation that has been breached but explain how it has been breached, for example the worker trips on an uneven floor – legislation breached is the HASWA (Section 2) as the employer should have provided a safe workplace.

The Conclusion is worth 15 marks – Note, 3 or 4 lines won’t give you a mark of 15, you need to ‘discuss’ the main points of the main findings and SUMMARISE them. Give some thought to this – 15 marks is a lot to lose!

The Recommendations are worth 15 marks – and MUST:

• Follow on from the Conclusion, if the points are not in your conclusion then they won’t score marks in the Recommendations.
• Give the Resource Implications in terms of Cost or Time. Don’t put – ‘no cost implications as work is carried out by internal staff’, give this cost in terms of hours spent.
• Give a suitable timescale for the recommendations.

*Please note that this blog post refers to the old syllabus (before 5 th September 2019) for The NEBOSH Certificate examinations. If you require further information on either the old or new syllabus, you can contact us; info@rrc.co.uk / 0208 944 3100

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Eva Ainscough Env(NEBOSH) Dip, GradIOSH, CBIFM, M.Phil, M.Ed, BA, RSA(Dip)

RRC Tutor & NEBOSH Practical Assessment Marker