Since its initial implementation in 2017, there have been a number of key documents written about Passport. All of them can be found on the Highways Safety Hub website. Here are some essential extracts from each document, contextualised.
What is Highways Passport?
The vision for the Highways Passport Scheme is “to develop a common structure for health, safety and wellbeing inductions and a means for providing evidence of specific H&S training of our supply chain via a common competency management system.”
The SCSLG Common Intent Document
The Passport System is a powerful online database linked to a secure individual smartcard which is kept up to date. This allows workers to carry their records with them as they travel across the Highways supply chain.
Note: Highways Passport Scheme refers to the common structure for health, safety and wellbeing across highways. Passport System refers to the software (SkillGuard) used by that scheme to underpin the scheme.
This ensures that everyone working on highways is competent and trained to a consistent standard. It also saves the organisations using the system both time and money whilst improving safety and offering a wealth of information of corporate benefit. This information helps your organisation ensure the longevity of your workforce and its ability to operate sustainably.
Or, as Nick Harris, National Highways Chief Executive, put it in the first edition of Inside Lane:
“The Highways Passport scheme helps everyone who works at our sites to get home safe and well every day. This scheme offers a simple and efficient way to ensure that everyone who works on any of our sites is safe and competent to be there. This initiative has my full support.”
What are the Expectations for Using Passport?
“As a supplier community we have agreed that, as suppliers to National Highways, we shall adopt the scheme in its entirety within the first three months of start of works (construction phase) on any National Highways project/scheme/contract. Principal Contractors of a project or scheme shall commit to reducing project/scheme inductions to a site-specific induction/briefing, given at a worksite, and only detailing site-specific hazards, risks and controls.”
The SCSLG Common Intent Document.
What Does ‘Adopting the Scheme in its Entirety’ Mean?
- The SCSLG Expectations Document outlines the following:
- Employers are to create and maintain their eligible worker records including payment of subscriptions and
requesting a physical smartcard for each worker and to ensure the minimum competency requirements recorded on the system are accurate and up to date. - Principal Contractors are expected to use the Passport card to validate workers' competence at induction.
- Employer/Principal Contractor Supervisors are expected to regularly spot check the Passport card to
ensure each worker has the valid competencies for the activity they are doing. - Employer/Principal Contractors are to ensure visitor permits are issued to those defined as visitors.
- Principal Contractors of a project or scheme shall commit to reducing project/scheme inductions to a site-specific induction/briefing, given at a worksite, and only detailing site-specific hazards, risks and controls
- The following must be loaded onto the Passport system:
- Highways Common Induction (automatically added after completion of the online induction)
- Base competency e.g. CSCS, CPCS, LANTRA, etc
- SMSTS, SSSTS etc for those appointed as a Supervisor
- Site-specific or contract-specific Induction
- First Aid Certificate for those identified as a nominated first aider by the employer.