Elements and Performance Criteria

Context
Public safety awareness activities may include:
· distribution of educational materials/resources
· use of media to disseminate information
· public educational presentations
· conduct of or attendance in community meetings/forums
· incident exercises

Relevant information may include:
· incident response plan and management systems in place to prevent an incident
· warning signals in the event of an incident
· procedures to be followed in the event of an incident relating to evacuation and welfare operations
· appropriate people to contact and contact details
· post-incident management systems

HSE
All operations to which this unit applies are subject to stringent Health, Safety and Environment requirements, which may be imposed through State or federal legislation, and these must not be compromised at any time. Where there is an apparent conflict between performance criteria and HSE requirements, the HSE requirements take precedence.

Relationship to Major Hazard Facility Legislation
· Organisations within the Chemical, Hydrocarbons and Oil Refining industries may find themselves falling under the provisions of various Major Hazard Facilities legislation. In developing this unit consideration has been given to the requirements of Sections 8 and 9 of the National Standard For The Control Of Major Hazard Facilities [NOHSC:1014(2002)] and the National Code Of Practice For The Control Of Major Hazard Facilities [NOHSC:2016(1996)].
· This unit will assist individuals to meet some of their obligations under the relevant State or Territory legislation. Responsibility for appropriate contextualisation and application of the unit to ensure compliance however, remains with the individual organisation.

Assessment context and methods
· Assessment for this unit of competency will be by way of simulation or observation under incident conditions. The unit will be assessed in as holistic a manner as is practical and may be integrated with the assessment of other relevant units of competency. Assessment will occur over a range of situations which can include a variety of incident circumstances.
· Simulations must, as closely as possible, approximate actual incident conditions and should be based on the actual facility. Assessments should include 'walk throughs' of the relevant competency components and may include the use of case studies/scenarios and role plays.
· This unit of competency requires a significant body of knowledge which will be assessed through questioning and the use of 'what if' scenarios both in the facility (during demonstration of normal operations and walk throughs of abnormal operations) and off the site.

Critical aspects
Consistent performance should be demonstrated. In particular look to see that competence in this unit reflects successful assessment in the critical aspects of:
· identification of networks critical to the development and implementation of public safety awareness activities
· design, conduct and evaluation of public safety awareness activities
· effective communication skills

These assessment activities should include a range of problems, including new, unusual and improbable situations which may have been generated from past workplace incident history, incidents in similar workplaces around the world, hazard analysis activities and/or similar sources.

Resource implications
Assessment will require (1) access to an accurately simulated environment or (2) a suitable method of gathering evidence of responding ability over a range of situations. A bank of scenarios/case studies/what ifs and a bank of questions to probe the reasoning behind the observable actions will likewise be required.

Other assessment advice
It may be appropriate to assess this unit concurrently with other relevant units.

Essential knowledge
The knowledge referred to in the evidence guide for this Unit includes:
· relevant legislation
· incident response plans and management systems (particularly warning signals and evacuation procedures)
· promotional techniques and methods
· group dynamics
· a range of presentation strategies and techniques
· protocols and procedures
· relevant organisational policies

Competence also includes the ability to isolate the causes of problems within the incident response system and to be able to distinguish between causes of problems indicated by:
· expressions of community concern about a lack of communication with the organisation
· an atmosphere of mistrust existing between the community and the organisation
· constant referrals of organisational activities to local, state or commonwealth authorities
· the volume of requests for information received from community groups or individuals
· protest meetings or rallies by concerned residents