Refresher training should be scheduled at regular intervals to maintain knowledge and competency. Generally, we recommend a fresher every 3 years or if radiation work changes substantially.

In Australia, every state has its own regulator who imposes the criteria and frequency of compliance testing for each radiation application. It is imperative that the operators adhere to licence conditions and have their equipment tested on regular intervals by licensed inspectors.

Radiation Management Plan (RMP) or Radiation Safety Protection Plan (RSPP) is a document that broadly describes how the radiation protection process is managed in your organisation. Every entity that utilises ionising radiation must have a plan in place. This plan should be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect the engineering and administrative controls adopted by the organisation running the radiation practice. In some jurisdictions, compliance to RSPP is mandatory and therefore it becomes a typical licence condition once the plan is approved and endorsed by the state regulator.

The radiation safety office (RSO) should be a person who has enough knowledge, expertise, and in some cases a licence to be able to manage and supervise radiation work safely. This person can either be an employee working in the same organisation or an external radiation consultant.

In addition to a formal qualification in radiation physics, professional radiation protection experts should have a broad scientific knowledge of ionising radiation, its effects, and its relevance to mining, medicine, industry, education, and research applications. In the presence of different regulatory authorities governing radiation practices across the country, understanding the current legislations, standards, guidelines, and licence conditions in every individual jurisdiction is a must. Unfortunately, a lot of advisors in our industry provide consultancy services without having the necessary knowledge, qualification, and expertise. In fact, most of those are salespersons masqueraded as radiation specialists to achieve their veiled sales and business targets. Their scope of work is usually narrowed to simple radiation applications in standard work environments that rarely or never change while perfectly pointing the focus to their ambitious sales and commission goals. In order to distinguish professionals who have demonstrated proficiency and knowledge in radiation safety, The Australian Radiation Protection Accreditation Board (ARPAB) maintains a comprehensive certification process that passes through a number of assessment stages. At the moment, less than 30 people are certified by ARPAB in the country. Businesses, regulatory bodies, and the public can be restfully confident that by engaging a person with ARPAB certification for radiation safety consultancy, the advice is being provided by a qualified person who has had their competency, skills, experience and formal qualification appraised by a professional assessing agency.

Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) refers to radioactive substances that are present in the environment. These materials are found in soil, rock, and water and include various isotopes that emit different radiation types. The NORM management scheme will differ depending on the purpose of the program which could include OH&S, export, decommissioning, rehabilitation, clearance, and industrial waste disposal. The rules that govern NORM are not self-explanatory and differ greatly from one local authority to another. In other words, what can be classified as regulated material in one state can be exempted in another. Based on the purpose of the assessment, a NORM management plan will specify the methods of control and incorporate a suitable monitoring and sampling program.

Radiation shielding design is a crucial aspect of radiation protection aimed at minimizing the exposure of people and the environment to harmful radiation. Effective shielding is mandatory to reduce radiation levels to acceptable dose limits ensuring safety in various settings such as medical facilities, research labs, and industrial operations. By selecting appropriate materials, calculating the necessary thickness and integrating shielding into facility design, individuals, and the environment are protected from harmful radiation exposure. The complexity of the shielding design depends on a range of factors including building layout, anticipated workload, occupancy, source radiation output and others. Without having the right shielding design, business owners would either increase spendings on unnecessary extra shielding or would be obliged to make costly corrections.

High consequence/security enhanced radioactive material deserve respect and require extra security measures depending on the source category and on the current threat level identified by The Australian National Security. Most jurisdictions require owners and carriers of security enhanced radioactive sources to formulate a security plan and/or transport security plan describing the security methods to be implemented in order to restrict and authorise access to the radiation source.

It is true that radiation legislations can be confusing for a business that conducts a radiation practice in different states in terms of compliance and licence conditions. Seamless corporate operations can be achieved by involving an informative radiation consultant who can extract and interpret pieces of legislations. The ability to search for pertinent information should not be limited to ARPANSA codes and state regulations but should be extended to international refrences in order to combine elicited details with practical knowledge and provide a professional advice.