A point-of-work risk assessment is the supervisor's check, at the workface, on the morning of the task, that the plan still describes what is in front of the gang. Five minutes, one page. It does not replace the RAMS, and a site that thinks it does has misunderstood both documents. Written from the side of the desk that reads the RAMS and then walks out to see whether the job matches it, here is what the POWRA is for.
The plan and the check
A RAMS is written before the work, often weeks before, by someone who has not seen the workface on the day. It is accepted by the principal contractor, briefed to the gang and signed. It is the plan.
The POWRA asks one question of it: is it still true today? The same people, or a new starter? The same access, or a scaffold lift struck last night? The same trades alongside, or a ceiling gang that moved in above? The same weather, ground and services. Where the answer is yes, the sheet says so and the gang starts. Where it is no, the sheet says what is different and what will be done; where the difference is a change of method, the work stops and the RAMS goes back for revision.
The RAMS is the plan; the POWRA is the check that the plan matches the workface today. A one-page safe system of work sheet is the method for a small task, and the POWRA sits beneath it in the same way.
What the law says
No regulation uses the word POWRA. Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires the risks to be assessed, and regulation 3(3) requires the assessment to be reviewed where there is reason to suspect it is no longer valid. Regulation 5 requires arrangements for the planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive measures. Regulation 15(2) of CDM 2015 puts the duty to plan, manage and monitor the work on the contractor doing it; regulation 13 puts the monitoring of the whole construction phase on the principal contractor. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is the employer's duty; section 7 is the duty on every employee to take reasonable care, which is what a dynamic risk assessment card puts into a pocket.
The POWRA is how a contractor shows, day by day, that those duties were met at the point of work and not only in the office.
The five sheets around it
The daily pre-task briefing record is the supervisor's start-of-shift talk about the task, with the POWRA read out and the gang's signatures. It is not the RAMS briefing record in the site forms family, which is signed once per revision and records the briefing of the document, not of the day's task. The last-minute checklist is the tick before the first cut, dig or lift that the controls are physically there. The dynamic risk assessment card is the think-stop-act prompt for a change mid-task. The task change and stop-and-reassess record is what was written when someone stopped the work: what changed, who stopped it, what was decided, who re-briefed. The register indexes all of them, and is where the principal contractor sees the pattern: which tasks are different every day, which gangs stop, which RAMS keep needing revising.
The two mistakes
The first is the POWRA completed in the cabin with the RAMS open on the desk. It records nothing, because its one question can only be answered at the workface. The second is the POWRA that carries a change of method in the "what is different today" box, signed off by the supervisor. That is a RAMS revision, and it goes back through the review and the re-brief before the task restarts. A supervisor can add a control at the workface; a supervisor cannot rewrite the plan on a clipboard.
What a template does not do
The sheet gives the supervisor the questions to ask at the workface and the space to write the answers. It does not know the site, and it does not decide whether today matches the plan. The competent person standing at the point of work decides that, and no document makes anyone compliant. Why we will never call a document "compliant".
Documents for this work
- The point-of-work risk assessment bundle — all six sheets
- Point-of-Work Risk Assessment (POWRA) — the check itself
- Daily Pre-Task Briefing Record
- Last-Minute Risk Assessment Checklist
- Dynamic Risk Assessment Card
- Task Change and Stop-and-Reassess Record
- POWRA Register
- RAMS Briefing and Acceptance Record — the briefing of the document, once per revision
- Do I need a method statement or a RAMS? — the plan the POWRA checks