This Code of Practice is designed to help companies assess and maintain the competence of their engineering staff particularly in safety critical areas and industries. It sets out the competencies expected and evidence required to prove competence in specific tasks and helps organisations create schemes for monitoring and measuring the competencies of its employees. Human error is still recognised as the most frequent cause of problems and the field of safety critical systems and functional safety continues to develop along with the complexity of systems.

The purpose of the Code of Practice is:

• To help organisations with creating or developing a scheme for assessing the competence of people and teams undertaking safety critical functions
• To demonstrate to clients that an organisation has the necessary competence to undertake particular activities and that a recognised competence measurement scheme has been used
• To provide clear levels of expertise and competence required prior to recruiting engineers in safety critical roles. And subsequently for appraising / training those personnel
• To help in implementing an overall competence management system (CMS) for an engineering division or organisation
• To comply with regulatory requirements/relevant standards, showing duty of care and compliance to regulations and EU directives (specifically IEC 61508 and HSE requirements)
• To provide evidence of best practice and high levels of competence to any industry regulator and to avoid potential litigation