Risk assessments and method statements: what method statements and risk assessments are for, and who actually reads them
- Work order total
- $863.16
- Labour
- $510
- Parts, marked up
- $288
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Jobcardo publishes no tax rate, no wage figure and no trade standard: the rate, the markup and the tax on the parts line are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.
Risk assessments and method statements exist for three different readers, and a pack that only serves one of them causes trouble. The crew needs a sequence they can follow and a briefing they remember. The principal contractor needs evidence that the work has been thought through before it starts on their site. An investigator, months later, needs to see what was known and what was decided at the time. The same pack can do all three, but only if it is written for the crew first and kept as a dated record afterwards.
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Write for the crew, because they are the control
Method statements and risk assessments that are written to satisfy a reviewer read like legal documents and get skimmed. Written as a sequence of steps in the language the trade uses, they get followed, and a followed method is the only version that prevents anything.
Brief it and record the briefing
The pack becomes a control at the moment the crew is taken through it. Record who was briefed, by whom and when, against the same job. That record is worth more after an incident than any amount of careful wording in the document itself.
Keep the pack, the briefing and the job together
A pack in a folder, a briefing signature on a pad and the job in an accounts system is three places and a lost afternoon when somebody asks. On one dated job record, the answer to what was planned, who knew and what changed is a single search.
Risk assessments and method statements: common questions
Do small firms really need both documents? The duty is to assess the risk and to plan the work safely, and on anybody else's site you will be asked for evidence of both. For a one person job on your own premises a proportionate assessment may be brief, but there is no size of firm at which planning the work stops being expected.
Who keeps the originals? You do, and the principal contractor keeps the copy they accepted. That is another argument for versioning: if their copy and yours differ after a change, the question of which was in force becomes an argument nobody wins.
How specific does the assessment have to be? Specific enough that somebody who has not seen the site can picture the job. Generic phrases such as take care and use appropriate equipment are not controls, and a reviewer who sees a page of them reads the whole pack as decoration.
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