2 min read
How missing RAMS can shut down a site inspection on the spot
A Risk Assessment Method Statement that's missing, out of date, or not signed by the people on site can stop an inspection dead. Here's why it happens more often than it should.
RAMS, Risk Assessment and Method Statements, exist to show that work has been properly planned with the hazards identified and controlled before anyone starts. They're a basic requirement under health and safety law for anything above the most trivial task, and they're one of the first things an HSE inspector, a principal contractor's site manager, or a client's health and safety consultant will ask to see if they turn up unannounced.
The problem in practice usually isn't that RAMS don't exist. It's that they exist somewhere, on a laptop back at the office, in an email sent weeks ago, in a folder that isn't accessible on site, and the version being worked to on the day doesn't match what's been signed by the people currently doing the task. An inspector who asks a labourer to show them the RAMS for the job they're doing right now, and gets a shrug or a phone call back to the office, has grounds to stop work there and then.
It gets worse when the work itself has changed since the RAMS was written. A method statement for excavation near a boundary wall that assumed certain ground conditions, but the actual conditions on the day turned out different, needs to be reviewed and reissued, not quietly worked around. An inspector who spots a mismatch between the documented method and what's happening is entitled to treat that as a serious finding, not a technicality.
The sign off itself matters as much as the document. RAMS that everyone on the task has read and signed, with a date, is a different thing to RAMS that exist as a PDF nobody's looked at. If there's an incident, the difference between those two situations is often the difference between a straightforward investigation and a much more serious one, because unsigned RAMS suggest the process was a paperwork exercise rather than a real safety control.
Keeping RAMS accessible on site, tied to the specific job and task, with a clear signature record from everyone working to them, closes almost all of this off. It's a document management problem as much as a safety one, and it's exactly the kind of thing that belongs in the same place as the rest of a job's records rather than in a separate system nobody checks before starting work.