Meeting the assessment expectations of

the NEBOSH Diploma

Some students have already commenced the Unit 1 assessment. If you have then this material
has been put together to support you. Even if you have worked through much of the
assessment it is worth going through this document and reviewing it against your work.

If you haven’t started the assessment yet, this material is still useful. It is applicable to all of the
NEBOSH Diploma assessments. This guide has been created by RRC and is not an official
NEBOSH resource. We have had it checked by NEBOSH to ensure that the resource will be
helpful.

We will look at the following things:

• Relevant to all students:
• The expectations from a level 10 SCQF course (FHEQ level 6)
• What is a scenario and what am I supposed to do?
• Should I provide references?
• Relevant to Unit 1 students:
• What needs to go into the reflection?
• What do I need to demonstrate for the research project?

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 The expectations from a Level 10 SCQF course (FHEQ Level 6)
This level of study is equivalent to the final year of a bachelor’s degree. As such it has a high
expectation of the skills that are demonstrated in assessment. We won’t go into great detail
here but instead use excerpts for level 10 and level 6 from the UK Quality Code for Higher
Education, which you can access here: https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/quality-
code/qualifications-frameworks.pdf

Level 10 SCQF Level 6 FHEQ

Honours degrees are awarded to students who
have demonstrated:
• A systematic, extensive and comparative
knowledge and understanding of the
subject(s) as a whole and its links to
related subject(s). A detailed knowledge
of a few specialisms and developments,
some of which are at, or informed by, the
forefront of the subject.
• A critical understanding of the
established theories, principles and
concepts, and of a number of advanced
and emerging issues at the forefront of
the subject(s).
• A critical understanding of the
uncertainty and limits of knowledge and
how it is developed, and an ability to
deploy established techniques of analysis
and enquiry within the subject.
• A comprehensive knowledge and
familiarity with essential and advanced
materials, techniques and skills including
some at the forefront of the subject.
• Skills in identifying information needs,
and in the systematic gathering, analysis
and interpretation of ideas, concepts and
qualitative and quantitative data and
information from a range of evaluated
sources including current research,
scholarly, and/or professional literature.
Bachelor's degrees with honours are awarded to
students who have demonstrated:
• a systematic understanding of key
aspects of their field of study, including
acquisition of coherent and detailed
knowledge, at least some of which is at,
or informed by, the forefront of defined
aspects of a discipline
• an ability to deploy accurately
established techniques of analysis and
enquiry within a discipline
• conceptual understanding that enables
the student:
o to devise and sustain arguments,
and/or to solve problems, using
ideas and techniques, some of
which are at the forefront of a
discipline
o to describe and comment upon
particular aspects of current
research, or equivalent advanced
scholarship, in the discipline
• an appreciation of the uncertainty,
ambiguity and limits of knowledge
• the ability to manage their own learning,
and to make use of scholarly reviews and
primary sources (for example, refereed
research articles and/or original
materials appropriate to the discipline).

While they may look different on the surface, a deeper look will reveal that they are very
similar. At Diploma level, you will need to be able to demonstrate the above in your assessment
in order to achieve the qualification.

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There are a few important capabilities to note here:

Capability General Meaning

Systematic knowledge and A detailed and coherent knowledge of an area with
understanding links to relevant subjects.
Criticality Using and questioning information to make points
(arguments), rather than just describing the
information.
Analysis The construction of a ‘bigger picture’ or trend from
data and information, or the deconstruction of the
‘bigger picture’ to identify the details and links
behind them.
Application of techniques Applying higher level knowledge, understanding
and skills e.g. analysis to solve problems or
contextualise information and situations.
Research Establishing facts through investigation and
drawing conclusions.

You’re going to need to demonstrate some or all of these capabilities in your Diploma
assessment, particularly for Unit 1. That said, you may be unfamiliar with the ‘criticality’
capability. Here is a great example of criticality in writing from the University of Leeds:

Descriptive example
"The data shows that the incidence (new cases) of asthma rates in children under 15 years old
increased rapidly from 1977, peaking in 1993 and then declining, though rates still remain
significantly higher than pre-1976 levels."

Critical example
"The trend, from 1977 until 1993, of a rapid rise in rates of asthma diagnosis in children under
15 years, suggests that one of the causal factors was particularly prevalent during this time, but
has since declined in importance or effect."

As you can see, the first example simply describes what the data is showing about asthma. The
second example however, uses the data to make a suggestion about the cause of what was
being seen in the data.

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What is a scenario based question and what am I supposed to do?
All of the assessments for the Diploma Units feature a scenario. You will be provided with
information about a fictional organisation and a situation, and will have to complete a number
of tasks. Depending on what the task is requesting, you will be required to:
1. draw on your systematic knowledge of the Unit
2. critically consider and analyse information in the scenario
3. apply your knowledge and skills relevant to the Unit

You should refer to the sample assessments on the NEBOSH website to get a feel for what the
scenario is like for each unit. Remember, the scenarios will be different for each exam delivery
so there is little point in ‘learning’ the scenario. The best thing you can do is practice and
develop your answer technique.

The tasks in the assessment will state if you need to write your response in relation to the
scenario or not. You must make sure to carefully read and factor in the information provided in
the scenario. Consider the example of a task that asks you to explain why workers still have
accidents even though there are safety measures in place. If the scenario talks about a workers
ignoring instructions and subsequently having accidents, when you respond about risk
perception and human failure you need to incorporate the information from the scenario and
your analysis.

If you have done an open book examination for the NEBOSH General Certificate, Fire Certificate
or Health and Safety in the Management of Construction courses then you will be familiar with
how it works and would have hopefully read our guidance document. If you haven’t or would
like a refresher then please refer to the RRC Guide to Open Book Examinations (page 7 – 9) on
the learning centre.

The section is included below for convenience.

Approaching the Exam Questions

The open-book exam will test you on your ability to, “demonstrate analytical, evaluation and
creative skills as well as critical thinking” and how you apply your learning to your answers. In
other words, you will need to show what you can do with your knowledge to solve the
problems presented to you – and this may take practice.

The following example scenario and suggested answer illustrate how to approach the question,
so make sure you read this section carefully.

Example Scenario

“You are a newly appointed health and safety officer for a district council. The council has a fleet
of six refuse collection vehicles with fifty team members in the refuse collection team. One of the

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employees, a driver of one of the vehicles, has reported a minor incident. A reversing vehicle has
struck another vehicle in the car park causing very minor damage.

The worker has reported the incident to the Street Scene Manager. The manager’s minimal
investigation found that the operator was to blame because insufficient attention was paid
when the vehicle was reversing.

The worker was advised to be more careful in the future or disciplinary action would be taken.

At the next health and safety committee for the Street Scene Team you are discussing incident
statistics and incident investigations that have taken place. Some of the committee members
(worker representatives mostly) discredit the investigation into the reversing vehicle incident.

How would you convince the other committee members to reopen the investigation? (10)”

How to Answer the Question

Familiarise yourself with the study text materials/notes/flashcards/mind maps and your notes
on incident investigation. Your notes will guide you to other information on incident
investigation such as HSG245 ‘Investigating Accidents and Incidents’. This may be a PDF
document on your desktop, or a downloaded version with highlighted sections from where you
have looked at this document before. Try to visualise the scenario. You can use your web
browser to research any terms that you are unfamiliar with.

Read the information provided in the scenario carefully. Consider that the information provided
is all relevant and there are key indicators given to direct your answer. A key piece of
information is that the investigation was ‘minimal’.

Your research will have indicated that a minimal investigation should be used for unlikely or
rare occurrences with the potential for only minor injury. However, the worst possible event
involving a reversing vehicle (especially one as large as a refuse vehicle) would be a fatality. You
are advised that worker representatives “discredit the investigation” and from a minimal
investigation it’s likely that the manager only looked for immediate causes. This is consistent
with the worker being blamed and no other causes being followed up. You are asked how you
would convince the ‘other’ committee members to reopen the investigation. The ‘other’
members are likely to be management or employer representatives because the worker
representatives want the investigation reopened. From your studies you will know that
persuasive justification for managing safety can be covered under moral, legal, and financial
reasons.

You could now consider an ‘answer plan’.

• Incident investigation:
o Purpose of investigation.
o Immediate causes.
o Underlying causes.

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 o Root causes.
• Examples of immediate/underlying and root causes.
• How to take the investigation further - ‘5 whys’.
• Persuasive reasons to reopen the investigation:
o Moral.
o Legal.
o Financial.
• Examples of moral, legal and financial reasons.

Suggested Answer (Remember to Relate This to the Scenario)

The committee members may have little or no experience on investigating accidents. I would
advise them that the immediate cause of an incident would be the unsafe acts or unsafe
conditions that led to the reversing vehicle striking the other vehicle. A medium- or high-level
investigation should establish why this happened.

The committee could be given examples of unsafe acts and conditions that a medium- or high-
level investigation may have revealed, e.g. damage to the vehicle’s mirrors, faulty reversing
camera or lack of a reversing assistant. Unsafe conditions may include poor levels of lighting or
reversing too quickly.

A ‘5 whys’ analysis could be used to further establish that the underlying causes themselves
were caused by management system failings such as inadequate training of the worker. These
are known as ‘root causes’ and without establishing the root causes, the incident may be
repeated with another vehicle and another worker - but this time it may be pedestrians are
involved and Street Scene would be investigating a fatality. This is morally and legally
unacceptable.

I would advise that root causes may be organisational failures, job-related matters or personal
factors. We may even find that we have not complied with legislation due to poor maintenance
of the vehicle or lack of management systems of work. I would also advise committee members
that monitoring safe systems of work was a legal duty that required a more complete incident
investigation to take place.

Without a clear identification of the causes of the incident corrective action to prevent a
recurrence would not be taken. I could go further and explain that the purpose of investigation
is not to find someone to blame but to prevent a recurrence. This cannot be achieved without
the full commitment of everyone in Street Scene.

This answer has 296 words which is within 10% of the target set of our assumed maximum of
300 words for a 10 mark question - so we can keep within the suggested word count (if it is set
at 3,000 words). As you complete your answer, refer to the documents and materials you have
assembled to remind yourself of incident investigation, and be careful not to copy anything

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from the materials you have used without quoting the source. Keep an eye on the word count
to make sure you don’t go over the allocated amount of words.

Example of an Insufficient Answer

Investigating accidents and incidents explains why you need to carry out investigations and
takes you through 4 steps of the process:
• Gathering information.
• Analysing the information.
• Identifying risk control measures.
• The action plan and its implementation.

Gathering information is about the where and who of the event. Photographs and interviews
are ways to gather information. Analysis of the information is what happened and why it
happened. Human error should be considered at this stage. Then you need to identify control
measures to prevent a recurrence. When you have identified control measures, create an
action plan using the SMART planning technique

Immediate cause: the most obvious reason why an adverse event happens, e.g. the guard is
missing, the employee slips, etc. There may be several immediate causes identified in any one
adverse event. Immediate causes include:
• Inadequate safety devices.
• Poor housekeeping.
• Operator error.
• Wearing unsuitable footwear.
The root causes are also known as management, planning or organisational failings.

There are three types of safety cultures: blame, no blame, and a just culture. It’s clear this
organisation has a blame culture and attempting to apportion blame is counterproductive,
people become defensive and uncooperative. Only after a full investigation, not a minimal
investigation, should individuals be blamed.

This answer has not used the scenario supplied and is far too general in its approach to attract
many marks. It also lacks substance and detail. The explanation given would not encourage the
reopening of the investigations because it has no moral or legal persuasion to convince the
safety committee. Bullet pointed lists do not provide sufficient evidence of your knowledge.
The examiner will only have the words you have used to allocate marks against. What does
‘poor housekeeping’ mean related to the scenario? The examiner cannot guess what you mean
and award marks against what it’s thought you mean. You must be clear in your explanation, so
your knowledge is demonstrated. This answer also uses acronyms, e.g. ‘SMART’. Using an
acronym seldom demonstrates knowledge, it is a far better response to write the words out
fully before using the acronym. It would also be clear that significant sections of the answer are
plagiarised from documents produced by the HSE. If the examiner investigated some of the

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phrases used, and found they reproduce someone else’s work, further assessment would take
place and a malpractice investigation conducted.

The same scenario would be used to ask questions related to safety culture, reporting
requirements, active/reactive monitoring, etc.

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Should I provide references?
Referencing is useful when you want to:
• Quote or paraphrase a source of information
• Provide evidence to support an argument

When you are using a quote, describing or critically writing about a piece of information or
using a piece of information to support a point you are making, then you must provide
references, especially at this level of qualification. If you don’t it may be seen as you attempting
to present other people’s work as your own without acknowledgement – also known as
plagiarism. This could potentially lead to NEBOSH disregarding your assessment submission and
action taken against you for malpractice.

A couple of helpful points:

• When you quote from a source (documents, books, online article etc.) then put it in
quotation marks – remember to include the source of your quote in your references!
• Paraphrasing – describing an idea or information in your own words is absolutely fine as
long as you provide a reference to the original idea or information
• You don’t need to provide a reference for things that are common knowledge

We have made a guide about referencing as part of RRC Guide to Open Book Examinations
(page 10 – 13), so you can find out more about how to do it using that document.

The section is included below for convenience.

Wider Reading, Research and References

During the open book exam you are allowed to access many different types of resources such
as RRC study text and revision guides, professional journals, digital resources on the Internet
such as HSE guidance, bilingual dictionaries, etc. Remember though that this is not a substitute
for thorough study of your course materials and specific preparation in the form of revision to
ensure that you are familiar with all the topic areas included in the syllabus. NEBOSH “will not
be looking for anything from your answers that has not been covered in the Unit syllabus”.

NEBOSH has designed the open book exam “to assess the same learning outcomes to the same
level” as the previous method of examination. It will “measure your depth of understanding”
and require you to apply your knowledge to the scenario given rather than simply recalling
memorised information. It is therefore “very important that you are prepared for the
assessment”.

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Wider Reading and Research
As part of your preparation, NEBOSH recommends that you should:
• “Complete wider reading so you don’t have to do this during the examination.”
• Conduct “wider research to understand how your studies relate to the real world”.

To help with this you should make use of the MORE... boxes included in your course material.
These highlight additional resources related to the topics you’ve been studying. Reading them
will assist you in increasing the depth of your understanding and applying it to real life
situations.

The links in MORE... boxes are current at the time of publication of your materials but may have
changed since, e.g. due to an item being moved elsewhere, being replaced or perhaps
withdrawn from publication altogether.

Your wider reading may also include research using other resources mentioned in your course
materials or resources that you’ve found yourself, perhaps by entering a topic name in a search
engine. Always be careful though to use only authoritative sources for your research, such as
Government or official websites, and to safeguard the security of your personal information.

Making Use of Your Resources

NEBOSH states that “You are expected to offer your own analysis and presentation of
information gained from research”. So you need to:
• Organise your notes in advance so that you can find things quickly.
• Use your own words to express what you’ve learned and apply the knowledge you’ve
gained.

You are permitted though to make reference to sources, ideas or work of other people or
organisations. Where you do so, it’s important to acknowledge where that information comes
from because your open book exam response must be your own work and you don’t want to be
guilty of plagiarism and subject to investigation by NEBOSH.

References
You will need to provide a list of references at the end of your answer document and there is a
dedicated section for references in the NEBOSH answer sheet. Information and examples of
how to reference are provided below.

Direct Citations
You may want to quote specifically from a publication you’ve accessed. Here you should put the
quote in inverted commas and make it clear where it’s from. (See also Reference List below.)

Example:

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HSE guidance INDG163 states that “A risk assessment is not about creating huge amounts of
paperwork, but rather about identifying sensible measures to control the risks in your
workplace”.

Indirect Citations
You may just want to refer to information that you’ve read without quoting from it directly. In
this case, express it in your own words but making sure that you identify the source. (See also
Reference List below.)

Example:
HSE guidance (INDG163) identifies five steps to risk assessment.

Reference List
Your exam answers should include a list of the materials you’ve referred to – those you’ve
quoted from , those you’ve mentioned and any other materials that you looked at during the
exam. This doesn’t count towards the word limit for your answers and it would be best to make
the list as you write your answers to ensure that the list is complete.

We don’t recommend using the Harvard (or any other) referencing system for this purpose
because NEBOSH has indicated that a simple list is all that is required.
Your list should include:
• the title of the publication/document,
• the author,
• the year of issue, and
• a Web address (for Internet publications).

Example:
HSG65 Managing for health and safety, HSE, 2013
(https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg65.pdf)

INDG163 Risk assessment – A brief guide to controlling risks in the workplace, HSE, 2014
(https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg163.pdf)

(In the above Example:

• INDG163 is included because quoted from and referred to in the text.
• HSG65 is included because consulted during the exam.)

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What needs to go into the reflection?
Is the process of thinking about things you have experienced and how you handled them,
reviewing what happened and if you might do things differently next time. The point is to learn
from the experiences you have.

The reflection in the assessment will set one or more tasks, and expect you to show how you
consider and reflect upon something and then take action.

The are different models of reflection, and outside of being academic you don’t need to know
them, but we will consider the experiential learning cycle by David Kolb so we can look at an
example of reflection.

Concrete
experience

Active Reflective
experimentation observation

Abstract
conceptualisation

Concrete experience: Something happens that we experience. Let’s say there’s a safety
manager that’s taken a new job at a forward thinking company and are responsible for
managing an experienced team. They’ve been struggling to work with the team using their
existing management style and both are frustrated.

Reflecting observation: Thinking about the experience and identifying things from it. The
manager thinks about the experience and notes that the team are very informal and
autonomous, whereas the managers style is more formal and focused on closely managing
team members. The manager identifies that their style has worked well for them at previous
companies, and the style the team are used to has worked well for the current business.

Abstract conceptualisation: Forming and/or modifying ideas based on things identified in

reflection. The manager thinks they should look into the style of management that has worked

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for the team in the past, and modify their own style by integrating parts of the management
style that works into their own management style.

Active experimentation: Testing out the new or modified ideas to see if they make a difference.
The manager has an open discussion with the team to discuss the parts of the previous
management style that the manager will reinstate while explaining the parts of their own
management style that will be still used with the team. The manager monitors the effectiveness
of the changes with a view to modifying their style if, on reflection, the change isn’t completely
effective.

You will need to write reflectively when completing the tasks. This is very similar to writing
critically and you should write that way for this level of qualification. You should avoid making
your reflective writing purely descriptive. Refer to the earlier section of this document about
criticality for an example of critical writing.

There is a great video from the university of Hull about reflective writing and it is only 6 minutes
long: https://youtu.be/QoI67VeE3ds

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What do I need to demonstrate for the research project?
You will be given a research project which will ask you to investigate a particular theme and
prepare a report. The expectations for the research project are provided in detail along with
criteria for achieving marks.

Note that the research project will require you to produce a report, and the expected structure
of the report will be specified as part of the task. In the production of the report you will be
expected to demonstrate all of the capabilities shown in table 2 in the section ‘The expectations
from a Level 10 SCQF course (FHEQ Level 6)’ section of this document.

In order to conduct research into the specified topic you will need to find and evaluate
information. If you don’t have access to academic databases then you are almost certainly
going to need to rely on Google. With that in mind you may find the following resources useful
for refining search results:

Advanced Google search: Getting Started - Advanced Google Search - LibGuides at University of
Texas at San Antonio (utsa.edu)

Google search cheat sheet: The Ultimate Google Search Operators Cheatsheet (linkody.com)

Once you have found resources on Google or elsewhere, it is always worthwhile to make sure
that they are valid and useful. For example, imagine if you find a post that makes some useful
points that you want to reference in your research project or as part of one of the other tasks in
the assessment. The post:
• is from a blog that covers a range of topics
• is written by someone who isn’t an authority on the matter nor a safety professional
• doesn’t include any links or references to support the points it makes

Would you still use this post as a reference to support your work on the assessment? The Open
University produced a great framework for evaluating information. It is called PROMPT. You can
find a short and useful tutorial here: Introduction - Evaluation using PROMPT (open.ac.uk)

It is always worth vetting the information you find as using poor information sources to support
the points you make in the research project, or any other task will put you at risk of missing out
on marks.

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