BUSINESS AND TRAINING
What does competency mean ?
11
By
Rory Macnamara
No matter what business , profession , trade or occupation one is in , one is required to be competent .
Competence is defined in all standards South Africa has and will , if applicable , refer one to a statutory professional body where one is required to fulfil certain tasks to retain their registration . The tasks are there to ensure one is kept up to date and / or to increase their knowledge .
There are also voluntary bodies , professional or not , that offer registration / membership and dependant on the mandate will offer tasks to update and / or increase one ’ s competence .
In all cases this is referred to as ‘ Continuing Professional Development ’.
Such tasks are presented in different formats like workshops , seminars , webinars and all the modern platforms available . That these are charged for or not is irrelevant for the purposes of this article .
This came up in a discussion about who can do what and how and it became clear that assumption was the issue and not the reality of what COMPETENCE really entails .
Referring to the National Building Regulations standard ( and stated in all standards when required ) for example , competence is defined as such :
“‘ Competent person ’ means a person who is qualified by virtue of his / her education , training , experience and contextual knowledge to make a determination regarding the performance of a building or part thereof in relation to a functional regulation or to undertake such duties as may be assigned to him / her in terms of these regulations .”
While the whole definition is vital , the parts , education , training , experience and contextual knowledge are critical , and all are required to be considered competent . Every one of these requirements is essential , not one or two .
So , our rather generic discussion went as follows , “[ A ] plumber cannot do air-conditioning work but an air-conditioning contractor can do plumbing .” Right ? WRONG ! There are similarities in training in so far as pipework is concerned as well as hydraulics and other areas but the air-conditioning contractor may have difficulty to contextualise the issue of pressure related to water in buildings for example .
Making Business Matter
Notwithstanding that , it still comes down to competence using all four elements of the competent person definition .
Researching competence outside the standards , I came across the illustration that provides , perhaps , another perspective to competence .
The use of the word intuition is interesting and goes way beyond a gut feel but from learning and experiencing , intuition is developed . Often one hears , “ Oh he / she did that intuitively and it ’ s worked .”
The point is we never stop learning and as the Hierarchy of Competence shows , to reach the ultimate state of unconscious competence requires learning , application and experience .
As our dedicated contributor Vollie Brink has often stated in his Dear Plumber pieces , DO NOT DO WORK FOR WHICH YOU ARE NOT COMPETENT .
One hears it in plumbing and most industries , “ I have done this for 30 years and no one can teach me differently .” Conscious incompetence perhaps ?
Each profession and trade has their place and only by working as a team do we grow into competence and that ultimately places one at the top . PA
Engineers have the same contextualisation as a Civil Engineer and Mechanical Engineer , both learn very similar aspects of engineering but at a stage specialise in areas that place them in different lines of work .
“ The point is we never stop learning ..”
June 2023 Volume 29 I Number 4 www . plumbingafrica . co . za