Once upon a time, long, long ago I got a freelance contract I detested!
It was in the early days of Health and Safety Plans. I had to compile one and, as best I can remember, ended up with about 230 pages of it! The only good part of it was that computers were available by then so it wasn’t all handwritten! This was the first one this particular main contractor had had to come up with.
Anyway, I sat at the desk for days and endless days pouring over the drawings and imagining precautions which would minimize every potential risk the main contractor would have –Â
even down to not scalding yourself brewing up!
It did cheer me up a bit being able to nag all the sub-contractors into having to do the same for their own parts of the works!
Sorry, there was another good bit, too. It was summer and there were areas of Special Scientific Interest on the site so I could have a wander (to collect my thoughts, of course!) and watch rare animals, toads and newts!
But to get back to the sub-contractors, being honest, their efforts went a long way towards that 230 pages total!
Copies of all that got bundled off to the client’s people and another copy went into the Site Office once that was set up. I’ve had to put a few H&S Plans together since, but that was much quicker and simpler job each time.
Read here: Do we really need a construction phase plan?
The starting point had become what H&S Plans had that company submitted previously? Then was there any additional project- or site-specific hazard which hadn’t already been covered? If there was something then that had to be written about and added to the main existing file before it was send out to all concerned parties.
Two or three decades later, unless you are going to do something as weird as put the Cross on the spire at Coventry Cathedral by helicopter, it has all been done and there is nothing more to add!
Every construction company has its own master copy Construction Phase Health and Safety Plan – all ready to print off or e-mail to all and sundry! Every risk and health hazard has already been considered and countered! Plus a lot that won’t exist on that project!
There it is! –
– The Ultimate Cheat Sheet!
Which nobody bothers to read anyway! Who has the time on their hands to do that? 🙂