RAMS

RAMS is shorthand for a Risk Assessment and Method Statement, usually supplied together before higher-risk work begins on site. The risk assessment identifies the hazards, who could be harmed and the controls that will be used. The method statement sets out, step by step, how the task will be done safely using those controls.

The two are separate documents doing separate jobs, which is why the acronym is slightly misleading. One is an analysis; the other is an instruction. A risk assessment that never turns into a method the crew can follow has not achieved anything on site.

What goes in each document

The risk assessment works through the task and records what could go wrong: the hazards, who is exposed to them, how likely and how severe the harm would be, and what controls bring that down to an acceptable level. Controls should follow the hierarchy of control rather than reaching straight for PPE: eliminate the hazard if you can, substitute it if you cannot, engineer it out, then control it by how the work is organised, and only then rely on equipment worn by the person.

The method statement takes those controls and turns them into a sequence: what happens first, who does it, what plant and equipment is involved, what is checked before the next step begins. It is written to be followed by the people doing the work, which means it should read like instructions, not like a policy.

Where RAMS fit on site

Most principal contractors will not let a subcontractor start until they have accepted their RAMS. In practice it sits alongside a cluster of other paperwork: COSHH assessments for any hazardous substances, a permit to work where the task needs formal authorisation, and evidence that the crew have been briefed, often through a toolbox talk recorded against the job.

This is where RAMS most often goes wrong, and it is rarely the writing. It is version control. A set of RAMS written for the original sequence, superseded twice as the programme moved, and then produced from an inbox during an audit is worse than no RAMS at all, because it documents a method nobody followed. Keeping each project’s RAMS in one place, against the job, with review dates visible, is what makes the document worth having, and it is the part Sync’s risk management is built to handle.

Under CDM 2015 the principal contractor also has to be able to show how the work was planned, managed and monitored. Accepted RAMS, with the review history behind them, are a large part of that evidence.