An employer who calls an HSE consultancy rarely does so out of curiosity. A labour inspector has visited, an accident has happened, a principal requires a prevention file, an insurer has raised questions. The consultancy therefore arrives with a confused expectation: “bring us into compliance”. Yet no one can bring a company into compliance on its behalf. The consultancy can say where the company stands, what it must do, in what order, and then check that it has done it. The distinction is not legal hair-splitting: it decides what the client is buying, what the consultancy can promise, and who answers for what on the day something goes wrong.

Risk assessment: the basic product

Everything starts with a visit. The consultant walks the site with a manager, workstation by workstation, and notes what can injure, poison, burn, crush, deafen, cause a fall. They look at machines, chemicals, vehicle movements, work at height, confined spaces, electricity, fire, noise, postures. They question operators, who often know better than management where the danger hides, and consult the accident register, where one exists.

Out of that visit comes a risk assessment: for each hazard identified, an estimate of severity and likelihood, the measures already in place, and those missing. The International Labour Organization describes this cycle — identify, assess, control, review — as the foundation of any occupational safety and health management system, and recalls that a safe and healthy working environment is now recognised as a fundamental principle and right at work. The resulting document goes by different names in different countries, but it has the same function everywhere: to serve as the basis for a prioritised action plan.

That document belongs to the client, not to the consultancy. A consultant who delivers a “generic” assessment, copied from another site in the same sector with the names changed, sells paper rather than a service: the only assessment that protects is the one describing the machines, products and people actually present.

The prevention plan and the hierarchy of controls

After the assessment comes the plan. This is where the consultancy’s competence is judged, because the temptation is strong to solve everything with personal protective equipment — helmets, gloves, masks — which costs little, is highly visible and shifts responsibility onto the operator. The hierarchy of prevention measures says the opposite: eliminate the hazard first, substitute it next, isolate it with collective protection, organise work to reduce exposure, and only as a last resort equip the individual.

A concrete example: a workshop uses a solvent that gives its painters headaches. The reflex is to hand out masks. Competent advice asks first whether a less volatile product exists, then whether a ventilated booth can capture the vapours at source, then whether exposure times can be reduced by rotation — and finally, for what remains, which mask and which cartridge suit the product. ILO Convention No. 170 on chemicals and the World Health Organization’s guidance on chemical safety rest on that same logic: know the product through its label and its safety data sheet, then reduce exposure at source before equipping people.

The plan ranks actions by urgency and cost, with a person responsible and a deadline for each; without names and dates, it is not a plan, it is a wish list.

Four refusals that belong in a good contract

A consultancy worthy of the name writes into its contract what it does not do, and that is often what reassures an informed client most. It does not take the employer’s place in their legal obligations: the employer remains responsible for the safety of their employees, however many reports they buy. It does not certify the compliance of a machine or an electrical installation: accredited inspection or technical control bodies do that, and the consultant merely recommends calling them in. It does not issue administrative permits, and it does not replace occupational medicine: it can identify an exposure, not monitor an employee’s health.

A client who hears “we take care of everything” should worry: the only thing a consultancy can take care of entirely is its own work.

Training: the one measure that remains when the consultancy has left

Training is the second major product of an HSE consultancy, and often the most lasting. Safety induction, extinguishers, manual handling, work at height, authorisations, the supervisors’ role: a company whose team leaders know how to stop a dangerous operation has gained more than with ten binders of procedures.

A competent HSE trainer adapts the content to the real audience — operators who read little, site managers in a hurry, executives who want figures — and above all evaluates what has been learnt, through a practical exercise rather than a signature on an attendance sheet. A training certificate says that a person attended a session; it does not say that they know. A consultancy that confuses the two sells paper.

The audit: measuring the gap, not judging people

The third product is the audit: checking, at regular intervals, that what was decided is being applied. The auditor compares a reference — regulations, a management system standard, a client’s specification — with what they observe, and writes down the gap. They are not looking for a culprit; they are looking for a cause. An expired extinguisher is not the caretaker’s fault: it is the absence of an inspection calendar.

The audit report distinguishes major non-conformities, which immediately expose people, from minor deviations; a report that puts a badly signed staircase and a gas tank without a relief valve on the same level helps no one decide.

Environment and emergency management

The “E” in HSE covers discharges, waste, nuisances and, increasingly, the impact studies required before a project. The consultancy helps the company inventory its discharges, sort its hazardous waste and have it disposed of through authorised channels, and prepare a notification or permit file. It also helps write the emergency plan: what is done in the event of fire, a leak, a flood? Who calls whom, where does everyone assemble, who cuts the power? The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction insists on preparation upstream — knowing one’s risks, drilling, designating people in charge. An emergency plan never tested by a real drill is a hypothesis, not a protection.

In the African context

Demand for HSE consulting, on the continent, very often comes from outside the company. Mining, oil and cement groups and international organisations impose on their local subcontractors safety requirements modelled on their own standards; the HSE consultancy then becomes the intermediary that translates those requirements into achievable actions for a twenty-person company that has never kept an accident register. It is a real market and a skill in its own right: knowing what a principal actually requires, and what can be satisfied other than by copying a multinational.

Then comes public inspection, present in the texts but unevenly in practice. Most countries have a labour code that requires risk assessment, occupational medicine and safety committees, and an inspectorate charged with enforcing them; the staffing and resources of that inspectorate vary greatly from one country and region to another. The consultancy therefore sometimes works with a client who is discovering their legal obligations at the same time as their risks, and it must know local law precisely: it is the country’s labour code that will be held against the client, not a voluntary standard.

The informal economy and cascading subcontracting weigh just as much: on a site or in a factory, part of the workforce is not employed by the client company but by a gang leader, or paid by the day. Prevention that stops at declared employees leaves the most exposed unprotected. Competent advice asks from the first visit: who works here, for whom, trained by whom?

The physical context matters too. Heat, the rainy season, degraded roads, power cuts that set generators running in closed rooms, chemicals resold without label or safety data sheet, counterfeit protective equipment: a consultant who applies a European checklist without adapting it to these realities misses the main risks. Conversely, a consultancy that knows how to do prevention with limited means — painted signage, marked vehicle routes, a posted instruction, a quarterly evacuation drill — brings the client a service that no imported standard replaces.

Finally, the profession of HSE consultant is built here from varied paths: former safety managers of mining or oil groups, environmental engineers, occupational physicians, technicians trained by a principal and then set up on their own. International certifications are expensive; field experience, verifiable references and knowledge of local law weigh at least as much in an informed client’s choice.

What a client should demand from an HSE consultancy

A contract that clearly separates the services — assessment, plan, training, audit — from what remains the company’s responsibility. Named, dated deliverables specific to the site, not a copied template. A prioritised action plan with a responsible person and a deadline for each action. Training sessions with an evaluation exercise, not only an attendance sheet. A confidentiality clause, since the consultancy will see everything. And references from comparable companies that can be called.

Setting up: little equipment, a lot of credibility

The consultancy needs no heavy equipment: a computer, protective equipment for site visits, a few measuring instruments (sound level meter, lux meter, gas detector, thermometer), solid document templates and an up-to-date regulatory library for the country of practice. What costs is the time to build a reputation; many start with one speciality — construction, mining, food processing — before broadening.

The consultancy’s website should say what it does with precision: the sectors covered, the services with an example of deliverable, the training courses with their duration and audience, the team’s qualifications, and references. A client who reads “we assess, you decide and we verify” understands what they are buying, and trusts whoever told them so.

The visit that changes everything

A business owner was showing a consultant around his workshop, insisting on his new extinguishers and his posters. The consultant asked to see the chemical store. It contained, side by side, an acid and a chlorinated product in unlabelled drums, under a window in full sun. No accident had yet happened. The report began with that point. A good HSE consultancy does not talk first about what can be seen: it talks first about what can kill.