Vocational Qualifications

HSQ personnel have been involved in the development of dozens of vocational qualifications (VQs) at Levels 1-4 and, quite literally, hundreds of National Occupational Standards (NOS) units.  The VQs follow the United Kingdom’s National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) model and are operated on the same basis.  The full Explosive Substances and Articles NOS, including munition clearance and search, are available as downloads from the Documents page of this website, along with a document explaining the many and varied uses of NOS.

Awards, Certificates and Diplomas

HSQ personnel have led the way in developing Awards, Certificates and Diplomas for the explosives sector. These follow the model set out for the Qualifications & Credit Framework (QCF) by the United Kingdom’s qualifications regulator, Ofqual.

Bespoke Qualifications

In some circumstances, it may be sufficient for an employer to seek external recognition of an internal HR process, eg accreditation of training programmes and/or employee competence measured against role profiles or internal/external competence standards.

Such an approach will work particularly well if the employer is able and willing to incorporate such qualifications in its own internal HR process, and even better if other employers recognise the worth of such a scheme.  HSQ is able to help employers develop such schemes and can provide the much-needed external certification service, relying almost exclusively on the employer’s own quality assurance processes.

A full list of our qualifications is provided in our brochure.