Competent person
Someone with the training, knowledge and experience appropriate to a given task — such as inspecting a working platform or checking a lift plan — so that they can identify risks and judge whether work is being carried out safely. What counts as competent varies with the complexity and risk of the specific task in question.
In practice
Competence attaches to a task, not to a person or a card. The same engineer can be plainly competent to check a standard matting layout on known ground and plainly not competent to sign off a lift over a basement lid — and the honest response to the second case is to say so and get someone who is, rather than to widen the definition to fit who is available.
Where this comes from: UK construction practice. Competence is judged against the task; this entry describes how the term is used on site and is not a statutory definition.
Where it matters on site
It is worth being direct about where our own competence stops. We can specify what our products do — published safe working loads, plan areas, build-ups and weights — and we teach the material in CPD-accredited seminars. We cannot assess your ground or approve your lift, and a supplier who offers to is not demonstrating competence but ignoring where it lies.