Career in health and safety

Am returning from the US in february and am interested in pursuing a career in health and safety could anyone give me some info on how to get started in this field.I see UCD have a part-time course every friday starting in october if you are working in the industry.Have checked a lot of employment websites and their appears to be a lot of vacancies in this field wondering is it hard to get taken on as a trainee .Would greatly appreciate any information.

ok so do you have any experience in any sector?
If you do have experience in Construction it would be good.
Get onto the IOSH site and see there is a forum on there to tell you how to although it is largely uk information. the Irish website is very poor (the irish membership and activities are good though) but you can look at the next meetup up/ seminar in your area and talk to folks who do this for a living
http://www.iosh.co.uk/ [broken link removed].
Its not a nice job but its a requirement of all sectors so its a good qualification to have.
DIT, UCD, DCU all have courses as well as NISO http://www.niso.ie/

UCC & WIT run an evening Diploma course

[broken link removed]



Would have to agree with Nelly about relevant experience. It would help considerably to have some experience in industry. There is still a shortage of fully qualified H&S personnel with several yrs experience for management positions. However, with the downturn in Residential Construction, there are a few H&S people available to fill more junior positions.

If you have some industry specific experience then it will help. The friday course in UCD is the 'entry level' qualification but combined with some practical experience in some field it might just about be enough for basic safety officer roles. The two year diplomas are a much better qualification but are much more of a committment. Becoming a safety officer or similar is not just a matter of doing a course and hey presto. Legislation requires you to be a competent person in order to advise on health and safety, i.e. you must have skills, knowledge, experience and qulaifications. Most employees look for a combination of academic qualifications and some practical experience.

I don't have any experience in health and safety and have not worked in the construction industry in a few years.I am actually a bar manager at present and have been for the past seven years.I have some very good contacts in the construction industry in ireland so i think i should have a good chance of getting in as a trainee.Also anyone got any opinions on the NEBOSH courses appear could be a better course than the one in UCD.