“Training can’t be a box you tick once and forget about”: Specialist trades urged to rethink safety culture.

Tradespeople need to have access to continuous training to help drive a culture that makes the issue less of a “tick-box exercise” in the industry.

That’s the view of property care company Timberwise, which is calling on construction employers to go further and faster in the area.

Their call comes as Timberwise wraps up its National Safety Month campaign, and lands at a moment when Building Safety legislation is placing growing emphasis on demonstrable, ongoing competence.

“Our technicians work in restricted spaces, handle hazardous chemicals and often operate at height, sometimes all in the same day,” said George Edwards, the Managing Director of Timberwise. “The hazards change from property to property, so the training has to be continuous to match that.”

“Specialist property care work exposes technicians to a distinct combination of hazards rarely found together in a single trade.

“They include restricted spaces beneath floorboards and in roof voids, bringing dust inhalation, restricted exits and invisible risks such as toxic fumes.

“Another big issue are chemical treatments including damp proof injection creams and fungicidal or insecticidal sprays, which can cause skin irritation or asphyxiation without correct protective measures.

“We also need to be mindful of structural instability in properties weakened by moisture, woodworm or fungal decay, increasing collapse risk, particularly when combined with work at height.

“An under-discussed issue is driving fatigue, which is a big problem, given how much specialist trade work involves travelling between sites.”

Timberwise has devised a structured programme spanning Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH), working at height (PASMA and IPAF), manual handling, equipment competency, vibration monitoring, asbestos awareness (UKATA or IATP), slips and trips awareness, and driving safety.

Formal courses are reinforced through toolbox talks, short briefings delivered before a shift or task and followed by discussion, adapted to whatever situation technicians are walking into that day. For teams working across scattered sites, these are sometimes run as weekly catch-ups or circulated by email rather than delivered in person. They also double as debriefs, used to share lessons learned after an incident or near miss.

“You can sit someone through every course we run,” Edwards said, “but it’s the five minutes before they walk into a property that tells them what to actually watch out for that day.”

Mr Edwards also points HR and competency leads towards the Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Behaviours (SKEB) framework, which looks beyond whether someone holds a certificate to whether they have the practical experience and judgement to apply it safely on a live site.

Beyond its own workforce, Timberwise runs accredited CPD seminars for architects, surveyors, structural engineers, property managers and local authorities, covering damp, timber decay, basement waterproofing and structural repair. The aim, Edwards says, is to help design professionals understand the safety implications of these defects before remedial works begin, rather than after a problem has already emerged on site.

“It becomes part of how the whole industry raises its standards,” Edwards added.

There is also a recruitment dimension employers may be underestimating. In a sector that regularly struggles to attract and retain skilled technicians, Edwards suggests that visible investment in training and competence has become a differentiator in its own right, and one that HR teams are increasingly building into how they pitch roles to candidates.

“Technicians can tell the difference between a firm that trains them properly and one that’s just meeting the minimum,” he said. “In a market where skilled people have options, that difference is often what decides whether someone stays.”