How long does a course last before it goes out of date: how to calculate the shelf life of training and plan reviews

 

A course's shelf life isn't set by the calendar but by what makes it expire: a regulation, a procedure, a product or a system. You calculate it by combining the legal refresher period, where there is one, with how often the document behind the course changes.

The training lead at a distribution company has 140 courses in the catalog and a question from her director: how many are up to date? She doesn't know. Some were reviewed last year, others haven't been touched in three years, and for a few nobody remembers who made them. Reviewing all of them every year, with a team of two, is impossible.

The way out isn't to review more but to review better: knowing which courses expire quickly, which last for years and which have a date set by law. With that information, the catalog stops being a block of 140 courses and becomes a review calendar a small team can keep up with.

In this article we explain what makes each type of course expire, which periods Spanish law sets, a four-step method to calculate each course's shelf life, and an example calendar applied to a real catalog.  

Why reviewing the whole catalog every year doesn't work

 

An annual review of the whole catalog is the intuitive answer, but it fails on two fronts. For a training team of one to three people, reviewing hundreds of courses a year isn't feasible. And even if it were, the calendar doesn't match the real pace of change: a procedure can change three times in a year, while a communication course can still be valid five years later.

The usual result is a shallow review of everything that misses what matters, or a review that keeps being postponed. Neither protects the company in an audit nor ensures people work with the right information.

The alternative is to give each course its own shelf life, based on what makes it expire.  

What makes a course expire: five types of content

 

Not all courses age the same way. What determines their shelf life is the type of knowledge they convey and what that knowledge depends on:

 

 

The periodic review column is an indicative criterion, not a rule: it acts as a floor when no change forces an earlier review. The rule that governs is the third column: a course expires when what it depends on changes.  

When the law sets the period: refreshers with a fixed date

 

Most training has no legal expiry date. Spain's Occupational Risk Prevention Act requires training to adapt as risks evolve and to be repeated periodically "where necessary", without setting a general period.¹ The risk assessment for each job makes it specific.

There are, however, cases with a fixed date worth flagging in the catalog:

• Professional drivers (CAP): 35 hours of continuous training every five years to renew the qualification.²
• Dangerous goods safety advisers: the certificate is valid for five years and is renewed by passing a control test in the final year.³
• Live work on high voltage: the written authorization must be renewed when the worker has gone more than a year without doing that type of work or when the procedure changes significantly.⁴

Collective agreements or some clients' tender specifications may also set their own refreshers.  

How to calculate a course's shelf life in four steps

 

With the two factors above, content type and the law, the calculation is simple. These are the four steps we propose.

 

Step 1: classify each course by type of content

 

Assign each course one of the five types in the table above. If a course mixes types, for example a procedure with a regulatory part, classify it by the one that expires first.

 

Step 2: check how many times the source document has changed

 

Look in the document management system at how many versions the procedure, internal rule or product sheet behind the course has had in the last two years. That history is the best predictor of how long the course will last. If the document has changed several times a year, the course can't rely on an annual review: it has to be reviewed every time the document changes.

 

Step 3: check for a legal or contractual deadline

 

Check whether the course is subject to a fixed-date refresher (like those in the previous section), the collective agreement or a client requirement. If it is, that period is a maximum that can't be exceeded.

 

Step 4: set the review date and an owner

 

The next review is the earliest date among the legal deadline, the indicative periodic review for the content type and the next expected change to the document. Assign each course a person responsible for reviewing it, usually the owner of the process or content, not the training team. When the course is built from the document itself, as with Vidext, where AI agents build tailored training from your procedures, reviewing means checking what changed in the document and approving the update before it is published.  

Example: the review calendar for six courses

 

This is how the method would look applied to six common courses at a distribution company with its own fleet:

 

 

The example shows what usually happens in any catalog: most courses don't need a full annual review, but a few need reviewing much more often. Focusing effort on those few is what makes keeping the catalog current feasible with a small team.  

Conclusion: an up-to-date catalog isn't reviewed all at once, it's reviewed on time

 

The training lead in the example doesn't need to review 140 courses every year. She needs to know which ones expire with each procedure change, which have a legal date and which can wait. With that classification, her director's question has an answer.

Calculating each course's shelf life is an afternoon's work per course family. What you get in return is a review calendar a small team can meet and a way to show, in an audit, that each course was reviewed when it was due.  

Frequently asked questions

 

How often should health and safety training be reviewed?

 

Spanish law doesn't set a general period. Article 19 of the Occupational Risk Prevention Act requires training to adapt to evolving risks and to be repeated periodically where necessary, and also whenever duties, equipment or technologies change.¹ The risk assessment for each job sets the specific frequency.

 

Which courses have a legal expiry date in Spain?

 

The most common are CAP continuous training for professional drivers (35 hours every five years),² the dangerous goods safety adviser certificate (five years)³ and authorization for live work on high voltage, which is renewed after more than a year without doing that work.⁴ Collective agreements may add others.

 

Does reviewing a course mean everyone has to take it again?

 

No. Reviewing the course means checking that its content is still correct. Deciding who needs to be retrained is a separate decision that depends on whether the change affects what the person does. We explain it in our guide on when mandatory training must be repeated.

 

Who should decide a course's review date?

 

The content owner, usually the person responsible for the process, rule or product the course comes from, with the training team as coordinator. Training organizes the calendar, but the person who knows when the content has changed is the one who manages it.

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Sources

 

¹ Law 31/1995 on Occupational Risk Prevention, article 19 - BOE ² Royal Decree 284/2021 on the initial qualification and continuous training of drivers, article 7 - BOE ³ Order FOM/605/2004 on the professional qualification of dangerous goods safety advisers, article 5 - BOE ⁴ Royal Decree 614/2001 on protection against electrical risk, annex III - BOE