A RAMS is a risk assessment and a method statement in one document: what could hurt someone on this job, what you will do about it, and the order the work will happen in. The principal contractor asks for it before you start because regulation 15 of CDM 2015 requires them to plan, manage and monitor the work under their control, and your RAMS is the evidence that you have planned yours. Written from the side of the desk that reads them, here is why they come back.
The five reasons a RAMS is returned
- It is generic. The document describes a trade, not a job. It lists twenty hazards from a library and none of them is the one the reviewer is worried about on this site: the live hospital ward next door, the school run past the gate, the asbestos survey that found something on level two.
- The risk scores are theatre. Every hazard is "medium" before controls and "low" after, whoever wrote it. A reviewer wants to see that somebody thought about which risk is actually the serious one.
- The method statement is not a sequence. "Works will be carried out in accordance with manufacturer's instructions" is not a method. A method statement says what happens first, what happens next, who does it and what has to be true before the next step starts.
- It does not match the site rules. The site has a permit system, a delivery window, a traffic plan and a first-aid arrangement. A RAMS that ignores them will be sent back to be reconciled.
- Nobody competent has signed it. A document with a company logo and no name is a template. The reviewer wants a person who will stand behind it, and a briefing record showing the people doing the work have read it.
What a good one contains
Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 is the duty behind the risk assessment: identify the hazards, assess the risk, decide the controls. A RAMS that satisfies a reviewer normally has:
- Scope — the exact work, location and duration, and what is excluded
- The people — who is supervising, who is doing the work, the competence they hold
- Plant, equipment and materials — including the COSHH assessments for the substances used
- The hazards on this job — with the controls written as things that will be done, not things that will be "considered"
- The sequence of work — step by step, with hold points where something has to be checked before work continues
- Interfaces — other trades, the public, the client's operations, permits required
- Emergency arrangements — what happens if it goes wrong, including rescue where work is at height or in a confined space
- Sign-off and briefing — who approved it, who has been briefed on it, and the date
The point of one document per activity
A RAMS written for "electrical works" covers nothing well. A RAMS for first-fix wiring in an occupied building is a different document from one for testing and commissioning, and the hazards, the sequence and the permits differ. That is why the library is one document per activity: the reviewer can see that the document is about the work in front of them.
What a template does not do
A template gives the structure, the prompts and the statutory basis printed beside each section. It does not know your site, and it cannot score your risks. A competent person in your business completes it for the job and signs it. No document makes anyone compliant, and a RAMS bought from anyone and submitted unchanged is exactly the generic document that gets returned. Why we will never call a document "compliant".
Documents for this work
- RAMS by trade — one document per activity, £19 each
- The RAMS bundle — every activity RAMS in the library
- Find your documents — three questions, then the shortlist a main contractor commonly asks for