Risk Assessment and Method Statement template every UK site needs

What a compliant RAMS actually contains, section by section, why principal contractors reject them, and how to keep yours current without producing a 40-page document nobody reads.

The short version

A RAMS is two documents stapled together: a risk assessment that says what could hurt someone and what you are doing about it, and a method statement that says how the work will actually be done, in order, by named people with named kit. Most rejected RAMS fail for boring reasons: copied from another job, missing site-specific detail, no named supervisor, or a method sequence that does not match how the crew will really work. This article walks through every section a compliant RAMS needs, the rejection reasons we see again and again on UK sites, and how to keep the document alive once work starts.

What the law actually asks for

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, and to record the significant findings if they employ five or more people. The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 then require construction work to be planned, managed and monitored so it is carried out safely. Neither regulation uses the word RAMS. The combined document is an industry convention, not a legal template, which is exactly why formats vary so much between contractors.

That matters for one practical reason: there is no single official form to copy. The principal contractor sets the bar on their site, and their document controller decides whether your RAMS clears it. Your job is to produce something suitable and sufficient for the specific task, on the specific site, on the specific dates. Everything below flows from that.

Section by section: what a compliant RAMS contains

1. Scope of works

One or two paragraphs that answer four questions: what is being done, where exactly on the site, when, and by whom. "Blockwork" is not a scope. "Construction of blockwork inner leaf to plots 14 to 18, ground to first floor, weeks commencing 6 and 13 October, by a gang of four from J Smith Brickwork Ltd" is a scope. The scope draws the boundary of the document. Anything outside it needs its own RAMS or a documented amendment, which is why a tight scope protects you: it stops the document being stretched to cover work it was never written for.

Include the site address, the plot or zone references, the client and principal contractor names, the document reference and revision number, and the date it was written. Revision control sounds like paperwork for its own sake until revision B is on site while the gang is working to revision A.

2. Hazard identification

List the hazards that are actually present for this task on this site. Not a generic library dump. For that blockwork example the honest list might be: manual handling of blocks and mortar, work at height from the scaffold, silica dust from cutting, moving plant sharing the access route, adverse weather on an exposed elevation, and the live services trench running past plot 16.

Two tests for this section. First, is every hazard specific enough that a reader could point to it on the site? Second, is anything on the list irrelevant padding? A hazard list that plainly belongs to a different site or a different trade tells the reviewer that nobody read the document before submitting it.

For each hazard, state who could be harmed and how. Operatives, other trades, site visitors and members of the public are different populations with different exposure. The delivery driver crossing your work area is at risk from different things than the bricklayer on the scaffold.

3. Risk ratings and control measures

Most contractors use a simple likelihood times severity matrix, typically 5 by 5, scoring risk before and after controls. The exact scoring scheme matters far less than the logic: show the raw risk, show the controls, show the residual risk, and demonstrate the residual number is one you can justify living with.

Controls should follow the hierarchy: eliminate first, then substitute, then engineering controls, then administrative controls, and PPE last. Reviewers notice when a RAMS jumps straight to "operatives will wear gloves" for a hazard that should have been designed out. For the silica dust example, the credible control chain is: order blocks cut to size where possible, use a bench saw with water suppression for the rest, position cutting away from other trades, and RPE with the correct assigned protection factor for whoever operates the saw. PPE appears at the end of the chain, not the start.

Every control must be real. If the RAMS says a banksman will marshal deliveries, a named banksman must exist on the labour list. Controls that exist only on paper are worse than no document at all, because they prove you knew what was needed and did not do it.

4. Method sequence

The method statement is a numbered sequence a competent supervisor could run the job from. Start at arrival and end at handing the area back: access and egress route, exclusion zone set-up, materials distribution, the work steps in order, inspection or hold points, and clearing down. Each step names who does it and what kit they use.

The most common failure here is a method written for an idealised site rather than the real one. If the scaffold will not be complete until Wednesday and the RAMS assumes full edge protection from day one, the document is fiction from the first morning. Walk the sequence mentally against the actual programme before submitting it.

Include hold points where work must stop for a check before continuing. A pre-pour inspection before concrete arrives is the classic example, and it is exactly the kind of check that should leave a record: our lesson on issuing an inspection from the live site covers how to raise that record from your phone while standing on the pour.

5. Plant, equipment and materials

List the plant and significant equipment the method relies on, with the certification each item needs: lifting equipment with current thorough examination reports, harnesses and lanyards in inspection date, 110v tools with valid PAT records, and the competence tickets that go with them (CPCS or NPORS for plant operators, PASMA for tower users, IPAF for MEWPs). The reviewer will cross-check tickets against the named operatives, so make sure the names match.

6. PPE

State the site minimum first (typically hard hat, safety boots, hi-vis, gloves and eye protection on most UK sites) and then the task-specific additions with the standard they must meet: RPE to the assigned protection factor the dust assessment requires, cut-resistant gloves to the relevant EN 388 rating for the handling task, hearing protection where the noise assessment says so. "Appropriate PPE will be worn" is the sentence document controllers reject on sight, because it means nobody decided.

7. Emergency arrangements

Site-specific, always. Name the first aiders and where they are found, the location of the nearest A&E with the route, the assembly point, how the alarm is raised, and the arrangements for any special rescue the task creates. Work at height needs a rescue plan that does not begin and end with "call 999", because suspension trauma does not wait for the fire service. Confined space entry needs a rescue arrangement in place before anyone enters. If your task needs a permit as well, the permit and the RAMS must agree with each other; our permit-to-work lesson shows the digital flow for hot works and confined space permits, including the closing evidence.

8. Briefing and sign-off

A RAMS that the workforce has not been briefed on offers no protection to anyone, legally or practically. The document should end with a briefing record: date, briefer, and the printed name and signature of every operative confirming they understood it. Fresh signatures for every revision, and for every new starter who joins mid-task. This is the page an HSE inspector or a claimant solicitor turns to first, because it is the difference between a safety system and a filing exercise.

Digital versus paper RAMS on real sites

Paper RAMS have one advantage: no battery. Everything else favours digital, and the gap shows most in the ways paper quietly fails. The signed briefing sheet lives in a site cabin folder that may or may not survive to project end. Revision B gets printed but the copy in the welfare unit is still revision A. The sign-off page fills up and someone starts a second sheet that never gets filed. Nobody can say, months later, which version a specific operative was briefed on.

Digital RAMS running through a field app close those gaps mechanically. There is one current version, and superseded revisions are locked but retained. Briefings are recorded against named user accounts with timestamps. Photos of the actual controls in place (the exclusion zone, the water suppression, the edge protection) can be attached as evidence rather than promises. And when the principal contractor or an inspector asks who was briefed on revision C, the answer is a filter, not an afternoon in the filing cabinet. The audit trail becomes the asset: our lesson on reviewing the audit trail before a client visit is exactly the discipline that turns stored records into answers.

The honest caveat: digital only works if the site rhythm supports it. A tablet that never syncs is a paper folder with worse handwriting. Build the end-of-day sync check into the routine and the record looks after itself.

Why principal contractors reject RAMS

Ask any document controller on a large UK project and the same rejection reasons come back:

1. Generic content. Another site's name still in the text, hazards that do not exist on this project, a scope that does not match the order. Copied documents are the single biggest cause of rejection.
2. No site-specific emergency information. Wrong hospital, no assembly point, first aiders not named.
3. Missing competence evidence. Plant operations with no ticket references, or tickets that do not match the named operatives.
4. Controls that contradict the site rules. The method assumes ladder access where the site mandates towers, or a delivery route the traffic management plan does not allow.
5. No named supervisor. Someone accountable must be named, present, and senior enough to stop the work.
6. PPE hand-waving. "As required" instead of specified items and standards.
7. Method and programme mismatch. The sequence assumes conditions that will not exist on the planned dates.
8. Unreadable length. Forty pages of boilerplate hiding one page of real content. Reviewers reject what they cannot review.

Every one of these is avoidable in the drafting hour. The pattern behind all of them is the same: the document was produced to get through a gate rather than to run the work.

Keeping a RAMS current once work starts

A RAMS is a live document, and treating it as finished on the day it is approved is how sites drift into working outside it. Three habits keep it honest:

• Review on change, not on schedule alone. New plant, a design change, a different gang, weather that changes the method, or a near miss that exposes a gap: each one triggers a review. If the method changes, the document changes, gets re-approved, and the crew gets re-briefed before the changed work starts. A short documented amendment is fine for small changes; silent divergence is not.
• Log what actually happened. The daily record is the evidence that the controls in the RAMS were really running. Weather, labour, plant on site, and any stoppages belong in the daily report; the daily report lesson shows a format that takes six minutes and still stands up later.
• Close the loop at task end. When the scoped work finishes, mark the RAMS closed and file the briefing records, amendments and evidence photos with it. Under CDM the health and safety file outlives the project, and a closed, complete RAMS pack is exactly what you want to find when a question arrives two years after handover.

A final word on templates

By all means start from a template; every contractor does. Just treat the template as the skeleton and this site's specifics as the flesh. A reviewer can tell within a page whether a human who has seen the site wrote the document. If your team is moving this whole workflow into a field app, the training library has short lessons for each step, from raising inspections to permits to end-of-day sync, and the pricing page sets out what full access to the course library costs. Either way, write the RAMS you would want to be handed if you were the one climbing the scaffold on Monday morning.