Our founder
HSQE Ltd was founded in 2002 by our Managing Director and Professional Head, John Constable.
John is a Master of Science, Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner (CMIOSH); Chartered Quality Professional (MCQI CQP); Chartered Environmentalist (MIEMA CEnv); Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI); and is on the Occupational Safety and Health Consultant’s Register (OSHCR).
John started his career in Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental (HSQE) management in the early 1990s. He went on to hold senior HSQE positions in a range of high-risk industries including railways, construction, telecoms and power transmission.
That early experience made John one of the first advocates of an integrated approach to risk and opportunity management, based on the active engagement of people, at all levels within an organisation. Indeed, John founded HSQE Ltd because he saw a gap in the market for companies that could save their customers time, effort and money by taking such an integrated approach to management through the engagement of people.
Our first contract
HSQE Ltd’s first major contract was to provide consultancy and training support for Network Rail (High Speed 1), as they took over the operation and maintenance of the UKs first international high-speed railway. During that time, we:
- facilitated hazard identifications and risk assessments in support of operations
- facilitated the risk assessment that demonstrated the Eurostar run from Paris to London, at speeds up to 334.7 km/h, was safe from a railway infrastructure and railway operations perspective – the exercise culminated in a Eurostar breaking the UK rail speed record in 2007.
- facilitated the ‘acceptance into use’ of approximately 90 rail vehicles and 250 rail-related products on to high-speed railway infrastructure.
- facilitated the Construction Design and Management (CDM) aspects of the handover of St Pancras international station following its £800m refurbishment.
Moving on from there
HSQE Ltd then went on to provide consultancy and training services across a wide range of sectors for some of the most respected organisations in the UK and abroad.
In 2004 we became an approved IOSH training provider. We initially provided classroom and distance learning versions of IOSH managing safely ®, IOSH Managing Safely in Construction and IOSH Managing Safely in the Rail Industry. We also developed, and helped to deliver, IOSH Managing Safely in Network Rail, which was rolled-out across the business. We are now regularly rated as ‘outstanding’ by IOSH during their training provider reviews.
As our customer base and workload increased, so did the size of our Business Support Team and Professional and Technical Services Team.
In 2016 we continued our growth by developing our online training capability under the VitalSkills.co.uk brand. Our aim was to ‘provide assured training in vital skills at an affordable price’. We saw through our consultancy work that many organisations valued training, but often struggled to release people and pay the associated costs (travel accommodation, etc.). Taking our training online enabled us to deliver the same training, but in a more convenient way and at lower cost.