Silica dust training for everyone who cuts, grinds or drills stone and concrete
This is PHW training with a certificate of completion. It is not an accredited qualification, so it is for you to decide whether it is enough for your business.
Each person does the course on their own phone, passes a test that is marked automatically, and gets a certificate with a QR code that anyone can scan to check. You see who has passed. £22.50 a place.
£22.50 a place is the whole price. It costs the same for one place or fifty.
Cut, grind or drill concrete, stone, brick or block and you make dust. Some of it you can see. It settles on your jacket and your tools. The part that does the damage you cannot see.
HSE calls it respirable crystalline silica. It is fine enough to get deep into your lungs and too fine to see in normal light.
Silicosis cannot be undone, and HSE says it carries on getting worse even after you stop being exposed. At the start there are often no symptoms. Shortness of breath comes later.
HSE says silicosis usually develops after at least ten years of exposure. Very high exposure can make people ill much faster.
The workplace exposure limit is 0.1 milligrams of this dust in each cubic metre of air (written 0.1 mg/m3), averaged over an eight hour day. That is a tiny amount. HSE says it is the most you should breathe in a day, even with the right controls in place.
There is good news. HSE says the risk from silica is almost entirely preventable when the dust is properly controlled. That is what the rest of this course is about.
You cut a slab and see no dust in the air. What does that tell you?
About half an hour on a phone. It is nine short lessons, each with one question, then a test of 15 questions. People can do a lesson in a tea break and carry on later.
It says the person completed the online silica dust course and passed the test. It lists what the course covered and carries a QR code and a certificate number. It is training evidence you can put on file and show to anyone who asks.
Once someone has passed, you watch them set up and work with your own saws, extraction units and masks, and tick off the checks on the practical sign-off sheet. When every check is ticked, you sign to authorise them in writing for that work. The online course teaches what the dust does and how to control it. The practical on your own equipment is assessed and authorised by you.
The course explains what a face fit test is and why each person needs one on the mask they will wear. The test itself is done on the person, with that mask. The practical sign-off sheet has a line to check it has been done.
Yes. The course and the test are made for a phone screen, and each person uses their own phone.
Scan the QR code on it. It opens a page that confirms the certificate is genuine and shows what it says.
They are told which lessons to re-read, and they can sit the test again with a fresh set of questions. There is no limit on retakes.
It carries the date the person passed. You decide when to retrain people, and you can buy places again whenever you like.
It is drawn from the COSHH Regulations 2002 and published HSE guidance. Contains public sector information published by the Health and Safety Executive and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
They can ask for it again by email on the "Lost my link" page, as long as they gave an email address when they started.
This is PHW training with a certificate of completion. It is not an accredited qualification, so it is for you to decide whether it is enough for your business.