Health and Safety interview questions

Tell me about yourself.

What a good answer covers

• What they do now, the sector and size of workforce, why this role.
• Qualifications stated accurately — NEBOSH and IOSH are checked.
• Under two minutes, ending at the job.

Walk me through how you carry out a risk assessment.

What a good answer covers

• Identify hazards, decide who might be harmed and how, evaluate risks and decide on controls, record, review.
• Suitable and sufficient — proportionate to the risk, not the longest document possible.
• Talks to the people doing the work, because they know the workarounds.
• Reviewed when something changes, not annually by ritual.

What is the hierarchy of control?

What a good answer covers

• Eliminate, substitute, engineering controls, administrative controls, PPE — in that order.
• PPE is last and why: it protects one person, only when worn, and fails without warning.
• An example of choosing a higher control instead of reaching for PPE.
• This is the single most commonly fumbled point in these interviews.

How do you reduce manual handling injuries?

What a good answer covers

• Avoid, assess, reduce — in that order; training is not the first answer.
• TILE or LITE as an assessment structure: task, individual, load, environment.
• Mechanical aids and layout changes before technique training.
• Knows that 'we did manual handling training' alone is a weak control.

What are the main duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act?

What a good answer covers

• Section 2: employer's duty to employees. Section 3: to others affected, including contractors and the public.
• Employee duties under section 7 and the section 8 duty not to interfere.
• So far as is reasonably practicable, and that it weighs risk against cost, time and trouble.
• Names the Act correctly: Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

What is reportable under RIDDOR?

What a good answer covers

• Deaths, specified injuries, over-seven-day incapacitation, occupational diseases, dangerous occurrences.
• The reporting timescales, and who reports.
• Knows over-three-day is recordable but not reportable — the classic trap.
• Comfortable saying they would check the specified list rather than reciting all of it wrongly.

How do you manage a substance hazardous to health?

What a good answer covers

• A COSHH assessment, from the safety data sheet and the actual task rather than the sheet alone.
• Elimination and substitution first, then engineering controls such as LEV.
• Health surveillance where it applies, and exposure monitoring.
• Storage, spill response and disposal.

How do you investigate an incident?

What a good answer covers

• Make the area safe first. Nothing else starts until that is done.
• Gather evidence while it is fresh: scene, photographs, witnesses separately.
• Immediate cause, underlying cause, root cause — and that stopping at 'operator error' is a failed investigation.
• Recommendations that are owned, dated and followed up.

Someone was injured doing something they had been told not to do. How do you handle that?

Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.

When would you use a permit to work?

What a good answer covers

• High-risk, non-routine work: hot work, confined spaces, work at height in some settings, isolation of energy.
• What the permit does — authorisation, defined precautions, a formal handback.
• The failure mode: permits issued as paperwork with nobody checking the conditions.
• Who is competent to issue one.

A supervisor tells you the safe method is slowing production. What do you do?

Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.

How would you improve safety culture somewhere it is poor?

Senior. Marked against your own answer in the app.

You walk onto a site and see someone working at height with no edge protection. What do you do?

What a good answer covers

• Stops the work immediately. Everything else comes after.
• Makes it safe, then establishes how it came to be happening.
• Speaks to the person without humiliating them, and to whoever planned the job.
• A candidate who reaches for the risk assessment before stopping the work has answered wrongly.

What is the difference between an audit and an inspection?

What a good answer covers

• An inspection looks at conditions; an audit looks at whether the system works.
• Active versus reactive monitoring, with examples of each.
• Findings that get closed out, with owners and dates.
• Why lost-time injury frequency alone is a poor measure of safety performance.

What are the duty holders under CDM 2015?

What a good answer covers

• Client, principal designer, principal contractor, designers, contractors, workers.
• The client's duties are often the ones nobody has told them about.
• Construction phase plan, pre-construction information, the health and safety file.
• Comfortable saying if their experience is general industry rather than construction.

How do you control contractors on your site?

What a good answer covers

• Competence checked before they arrive, not on the day.
• Induction, permits, method statements reviewed rather than filed.
• Someone owns the relationship and monitors the work in progress.
• Section 3 of the Act: the duty extends to people who are not your employees.

What is in a fire risk assessment?

What a good answer covers

• Sources of ignition, fuel and oxygen; people at risk, especially anyone needing help to evacuate.
• Means of escape, detection, warning, firefighting equipment, maintenance.
• The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order and the responsible person.
• Reviewed when the building or its use changes.

What qualifications do you hold?

What a good answer covers

• Accurate: NEBOSH General Certificate, Diploma, IOSH Managing Safely, NVQ, technical membership — whichever is true.
• Does not inflate. These are checked, often before the second interview.
• What they are working towards, if anything.
• Comfortable that experience and a certificate are different things.