Risk assessments and method statements, often referred to as RAMS, are health and safety documents that contain details of hazards as well as a step-by-step guide to working around these hazards.
Risk assessments
A risk assessment outlines how a job could result in injury or damage and tells you the control measures to put in place to ensure that the chance of anything going wrong is eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level.
Employers have a legal duty to prepare risk assessments for work activities that could result in injury to people or damage equipment. If there are less than five employees, the risk assessment must still be carried out although there is no legal duty to write them down.
Employers also have a legal duty to communicate the findings of the risk assessment to operatives who may be affected by it. Therefore, depending on the size of your company, you should either be told or be asked to read, what the risks and control measures are for each job that you carry out.
There is no specified way for laying out a risk assessment so you must familiarise yourself with the way your employer lays out theirs.
A risk assessment can be broken down into the following 5 steps:
- Identify hazards
- Assess the risks
- Control the risks
- Record your findings
- Review the controls
These steps are used to control the health and safety risks caused by hazards in the workplace.
In many cases, risk assessments are part of the method statement.
Method statements
Method statements are usually found with a risk assessment because they enhance the information gathered from the risk assessment and go into depth to plan the workplace activity.
A method statement is a written list of operations, to be carried out in a specified sequence to complete a work activity safely. Individuals must read and sign off that they have read the method statement involved in the job that they are doing.
A well-written method statement should address all the hazards present and all work should be planned so that the risk of an accident is eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level.
Most method statements also include a risk assessment for the same job so that the operative can read what hazards have been considered and the risk of accidents has been managed.
