[ Focus: Safe systems of work ]
A simpler method statement Noting the need for, and the value of, a concise and practical SSoW, in 2011 HELM – an informal group of motivated building services health and safety managers – set about drafting what a ‘good’ method statement might look like. Members of HELM had long been required to try and work with industry method statements running into many dozens of pages. Both the ECA and the Building and Engineering Services Association (B&ES) were invited to join HELM, to provide extra input, and help move some of its ideas and outputs into the wider industry arena. In 2012, the ECA presented a HELM draft method
statement template to the Strategic Forum for Construction (SFfC) health and safety group, where the ECA held the deputy chairmanship. SFfC decided to run with this document, and with the benefit of further input from industry groups such as the CITB, UK Contractors’ Group (UKCG) and Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group, set about producing a ‘mark 2’ template SSoW. Echoing the HELM philosophy, the SFfC group set itself the basic task of producing an SSoW template that shows what ‘good’ looks like, based on existing and recognised good practice (for example, company templates and sector documents such as CITB’s GE 700). Other aims included:
n Basing the SSoW on the findings of an activity- based risk assessment;
n Showing the most important features of the SSoW on the front page;
n Keeping the document as short as it needs to be (as opposed to making it as long as it can be); and
n Producing a useful guide to compiling SSoWs – not a mandatory document. The last point is significant. The document does
not set out to tell everyone what SSoWs should look like. Instead, it is intended to be a widely recognised and useful reference point for anyone who is interested in producing a good SSoW, and to show how ‘less can be more’.
What we can leave out of a SSOW A good SSoW needs to be a succinct description of what to do to ensure health and safety, taking account of the significant risks. It needs to be as brief as possible, consistent with getting what is required across to those doing the activity. Site briefings (or ‘toolbox talks’) can allow
very effective discussions of a clear and concise SSoW. These discussions are not helped if the SSoW is buried or dispersed somewhere in a ‘bumper 40-pager’. To help keep an SSoW clear and concise, we concluded that it is best to omit any ‘hand waving’ statements, for example: ‘We will work to comply with...’ followed by a reference to background documents or information, such as: ‘BS1234’; ‘GE 700’; ‘the Health and Safety at Work Act’; ‘the Manual Handling Regulations’; or even ‘our company policy on…’
December 2013 ECA Today 57 HSE guidance on method statements?
Noting how active the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been in explaining basic health and safety practice to other sectors, and with the forthcoming revision of guidance to new CDM Regulations in 2014, we believe that the lack of an HSE SSoW template is a fundamental gap in HSE’s otherwise excellent information to smaller contractors. We trust the template will help HSE to fill that gap, and we recently sent a copy to HSE with that aim in mind.
It is rare for site workers to access general
A safe system of work needs to be a succinct description of what to do to ensure health and safety, taking account of the significant risks
background documents on site and, even if they could get hold of them, it is very unlikely they would read them. Beyond the risk assessment that led to the SSoW, references to numerous other documents and legislation can provide false comfort, and obscure essential, practical advice on how to do the task safely. We can also leave out information aimed at anyone
who is not actually managing, supervising or doing the work (for example, pre-qualification schemes, clients or the main contractors’ site agent). The SSoW is for the contractor undertaking the work and the main contractor.
n Readers interested in the general SSoW template may contact Paul Reeve for a version at: paul.
reeve@eca.co.uk
Culture The SSoW document – thanks to HELM in particular – is based on the principle that health and safety on site stems from good organisational culture, management, and workplace behaviours, rather than handing out voluminous ‘method statements’, notably to try to fix basic competency issues. When it comes to SSoWs, we strongly suggest that ‘good enough’ trumps ‘too much’ every time. With the above in mind, an ‘ECA version’ of the SSoW is expected to be freely available to ECA members in January 2014, and the plan is that a general version of the SSoW will also be available to the industry at large in 2014. The ECA version, which was recently ‘field tested’
with selected ECA members, will be combined with an ECA risk assessment pro forma, so that an activity-based risk assessment can lead directly to a useful SSoW for that activity. We trust it is a useful contribution to the industry and, as always, we welcome feedback.
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