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Confined Space Awareness
Half a day. What a confined space actually is, why people die in them in pairs, and why the single most important thing this course teaches is not to go in.
About this course
Confined space fatalities have a pattern that has barely changed in decades: somebody goes in, gets into difficulty, and a colleague goes in after them. More than half of the people who die in confined spaces are would be rescuers.
That is what this half day is built around. It is awareness training, so it is not teaching anybody to enter a confined space. It is teaching people to recognise one, understand what makes it dangerous, know what a permit to work is for, and understand exactly why the right response to a colleague in trouble is to raise the alarm rather than to climb in.
A confined space is also not always the obvious thing. Chambers, tanks and sewers are, but so are unventilated plant rooms, silos, ductwork, pits, cellars and partially opened excavations. A space can be a confined space because of what is in the atmosphere rather than because of its size, and plenty of people have died in places that did not look like a confined space at all.
The course covers the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 in plain terms, the specified risks, atmospheric hazards including oxygen deficiency, enrichment and toxic and flammable gases, the hierarchy that starts with avoiding entry, and what the emergency arrangements should look like.
- What legally counts as a confined space, and why size is not the test
- The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 and the specified risks
- Why the first duty is to avoid entry wherever the work can reasonably be done another way
- Atmospheric hazards: oxygen deficiency and enrichment, toxic gases, flammable atmospheres
- Physical hazards: engulfment, entrapment, heat, moving parts and stored energy
- Why gas can be present without any smell, and why your senses are not a detector
- The permit to work system: what it is for and what it should tell you
- Roles: the entrant, the top man or attendant, and the supervisor
- Emergency arrangements, and why a rescue plan that relies on the fire service is not a plan
- The single rule that saves the most lives: raise the alarm, do not follow them in
How completing this course helps you
- An Acadame certificate in Confined Space Awareness
- People who can recognise a confined space before they are standing in one
- An understanding of why entry is controlled rather than forbidden
- A workforce that will raise the alarm rather than becoming the second casualty
Who should attend?
Anybody who works near, around or adjacent to confined spaces without entering them: groundworkers, utilities and drainage teams, maintenance and facilities staff, cleaners, plant operators, supervisors and managers. Also useful as an induction level session for anybody new to a site with confined spaces on it.
Entry requirements. None. It assumes no previous training and it is written for the people doing the work rather than the people writing the policy.
Ready to take the next step?
Choose a delivery option, compare dates and book with confidence, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
Awareness or entry
Awareness training is not an entry qualification
This course is deliberately about not going in. It gives people the knowledge to recognise a confined space, understand the danger and respond correctly, which is what the great majority of a workforce actually needs.
Anyone who is going to enter a confined space needs more than this: medium or high risk confined space entry training, appropriate to the space and the risk, with breathing apparatus and rescue training where the assessment calls for it. We run NPORS confined space courses at low, medium and high risk for exactly that.
Employers regularly get this the wrong way round, putting a handful of people through entry training and leaving everyone else with nothing. The people most likely to die are the untrained ones who go in to help.
Working nearby
Confined Space Awareness. Half a day, and enough to keep somebody out of a space they should not be in.
Entering a low risk space
NPORS N702 Confined Spaces, low risk. The entry level training for controlled entry.
Entering medium or high risk
NPORS N702 at medium or high risk, including escape and rescue provision where the assessment demands it.
Course content
What you will cover
The qualification is structured around the management of health and safety and the practical application of risk assessment.
What a confined space is
- The legal definition and why it is wider than people assume
- The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997
- The specified risks
- Examples that do not look like confined spaces
- The duty to avoid entry where the work can be done another way
Why people die in them
- Oxygen deficiency and oxygen enrichment
- Toxic gases, including hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide
- Flammable and explosive atmospheres
- Engulfment, entrapment and free flowing solids
- Heat, moving parts and stored energy
- Why your senses will not warn you in time
Control and emergency
- Risk assessment and safe systems of work
- The permit to work: what it controls and what it should say
- Roles: entrant, attendant and supervisor
- Atmospheric monitoring in outline, and what the alarms mean
- Emergency arrangements and rescue provision
- Raising the alarm, and why you do not go in after them
Method of assessment
How Confined Space Awareness is assessed
Assessment is built into the session rather than bolted on. Your trainer checks understanding as you go and there is a short written check at the end.
Discussion and scenarios
Working through real examples, including spaces that do not look like confined spaces, and talking through what you would do if a colleague went quiet inside one.
Written check
A short paper at the end of the session covering the definition, the specified risks and the emergency response.
Certificate
An Acadame certificate on completion. This is awareness training and it does not authorise anybody to enter a confined space.
Ways to learn
How you can take this course
Every route covers the same accredited syllabus and the same support. Pick the one that fits how your people work.
Classroom
Tutor-led at one of our centres, with everything provided.
Ask us to open a classroom date →or ask MB nowDates and locations
Arrange this course
There are no scheduled dates for this course at the moment. It is normally arranged around you.
Tell us roughly when you need it and how many people are going, and we will come back with dates and a price.
Also available
In-company training
We run this one to order, at your place or ours.
Onsite / in-company
Run Confined Space Awareness at your site
We deliver anywhere in the UK, on your dates and around your shift patterns. For six or more people it is usually cheaper per head than sending everyone to a centre, and nobody loses a day travelling.
Tell us roughly how many people and when, and we will come back with options and a price, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
What onsite includes
- The same tutor, materials and certification as our centres
- Your venue or one we arrange near you
- Dates and start times built around your operation
- One invoice and one point of contact for the whole group
- Content examples drawn from your own workplace
Confined Space Awareness FAQs
Any place that is substantially enclosed where there is a reasonably foreseeable specified risk: loss of consciousness from gas, fume, vapour or lack of oxygen, drowning, engulfment by a free flowing solid, or loss of consciousness from heat. Size is not the test. A large unventilated plant room can be a confined space and a small cupboard usually is not.
No, and that is deliberate. It is awareness training for people working near confined spaces. Entry requires training matched to the risk level of the space, which for us is the NPORS confined space courses at low, medium or high risk.
Because the hazard is usually invisible and instinct takes over. A colleague collapses, somebody goes in to help, and the same atmosphere takes them within a couple of breaths. The course spends real time on this because knowing the statistic in advance is what makes people stop at the opening.
Every three years is typical, and sooner if the work, the spaces or the procedures change. Sites with a lot of turnover often run it as part of induction instead.
Acadame. It is general awareness training rather than a regulated qualification, which is the right shape for this subject: it is built around what your people actually do and it can be adapted to your own equipment, substances and procedures. Where a regulated qualification is what you need instead, we will say so and point you at it.
Yes, anywhere in the UK, and it is usually the better option. Training on your own equipment, in your own building, with your own procedures in front of people, transfers to the job in a way a generic venue does not.
Up to twelve on a standard session. For practical subjects we will talk through numbers with you, because a room of twenty watching two people practise is not training.
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