We are proud to announce that Paul Davis (Deputy Principal Learning Environment, School Operations, Year 12 students) has achieved something very impressive on a world scale. He has earned the exceedingly difficult NEBOSH IGC Health and Safety Qualification. Read his account below.

The journey of gaining the NEBOSH IGC Health and Safety Qualification

In mid-November 2024, I (a little apprehensively) enrolled in a Health and Safety qualification called NEBOSH International General Certificate in Occupational Health & Safety. NEBOSH is a UK-based organisation that offers what are considered the ‘Gold Standard’ in H & S qualifications.

NEBOSH IGC is not easy to obtain; it takes candidates on average 6-9 months to complete (but you get five years to complete it if needed) and consists of an open-book scenario-based examination (which is open for a 24-hour slot to complete) and an extensive work-based H & S project. The exam is offered around the world on the second Wednesday of every month in 8 different languages. You can complete the project in the same exam month period or in a different month period (which a lot of the candidates choose to do). Only about half the candidates pass either of the assessments in an assessment month.

Due to tight copyright restrictions, it is very difficult to get past scenario exam papers; NEBOSH never release exam answers.

There are not many organisations offering NEBOSH IGC in NZ, so I enrolled via a UK Learning Partner that offered the option to study the course online independently.

Over the Christmas break, I spent many hours studying the course material and writing up the work-based project. My exam opened for the 24-hour Open Book Scenario at 11am, 9 January UK time. This meant getting up twice in the previous week to be on two Zoom sessions at 11am UK time (11pm NZ time) for about 2hours each and getting up at midnight on 10 January NZ time to begin the exam itself. It is a very challenging exam, and it took me over 15 hours to complete with only about five 15-minute breaks during that time. The word count came to 8898 words. Two days later, I had to get up at noon UK time (1am NZ time) for a 30-minute question-and-answer session about the exam and answers I submitted. This session was used to verify that I was the person who wrote the answers.

I had decided to complete both the exam and project in the same time slot over the Christmas break, so I had a further 2 weeks after the exam to complete the project. You have to get a ‘pass’ in all 30 criteria areas to gain an overall project pass. I managed to complete the project with two days to spare, and it came to a total of 55 pages in length.

There is a stringent marking and moderation process conducted by NEBOSH, which means you won’t receive your results for at least two months. In late March, I received an email informing me that I had passed both the exam assessment and work-based project. The commitment, hard work and sacrifices to complete everything in two months had paid off.  You then get a month to apply for a recount, re-mark of your assessments, or choose to re-sit for a higher grade (and pay the exam fees again!). The result is then finalised if you do not request these. It takes a couple of months to get your Certificate, as it is individually printed with several security features to prevent forgeries. This finally arrived in late June, and the journey to get the qualification was completed.

There are only about 170,000 people worldwide who have gained the qualification; there are now at least 170,001!