What safety documentation is required from a subcontractor?

A safe work method statement is a short document that identifies a high risk activity, the hazards in it, the controls applied and who is responsible.

It is required by law for defined high risk construction work, and it is the document most often treated as paperwork rather than as a control.

When one is required

For high risk construction work, which is a defined list and includes most of what happens on our projects:

Work at height above a specified distance. Work involving demolition or structural alteration. Work on or near energised electrical installations. Confined space entry. Work involving asbestos. Excavation beyond a specified depth. Work on or adjacent to a road or a traffic corridor. Work involving mobile plant. Work near a pressurised gas or chemical line.

On a school or a council project, several of those are present on the same day, which means several statements running at once and the interactions between them managed rather than assumed.

What makes one useful rather than generic

A statement downloaded from a template and filed is worth nothing. A useful one is specific to the site.

**The actual activity,** at this location, in these conditions.

**The real hazards,** including the ones created by the site being occupied: students in the vicinity, public access, a live building, restricted hours.

**Controls that can be followed,** described in terms somebody can do rather than as aspirations.

**The names and competencies** of the people doing the work.

**A review trigger,** because a statement written for a method becomes invalid when the method changes.

Which is why the review is a real review before the activity starts, and why a statement that does not mention the occupied site has not been written for this project.

The rest of the pack

**Current licences and tickets** for the work: electrical, plumbing, high risk work licences, asbestos removal, traffic control.

**Insurance certificates,** public liability and workers compensation, current and with sufficient cover, which is checked against the requirement in [insurance and indemnity on a construction contract](/answers/insurance-and-indemnity-on-a-construction-contract).

**Plant and equipment records,** including test and tag, registration where required, and maintenance records for anything lifting.

**Chemical registers and safety data sheets** for anything brought on site.

**Site induction records,** which on a school or a government site includes the screening requirements described in [workforce screening and site inductions](/answers/workforce-screening-and-site-inductions).

**Modern slavery and supply chain declarations** where the contract requires them, per [modern slavery and supply chain reporting](/answers/modern-slavery-and-supply-chain-reporting).

Reviewed before, not collected after

The failure mode is a folder of documents assembled for an audit, where nobody read any of them before the work happened.

So the sequence is: documents provided and reviewed, gaps raised and closed, then the pre-start briefing where the method is talked through with the people doing it, then the work. A statement that nobody on the tools has read is not a control.

On site, the activity is monitored against the statement rather than against a general impression of safety, and work stops where the two diverge.

Where it sits in the system

The review, the monitoring and the record are the principal contractor's obligation, which does not transfer with the subcontract, and that arrangement is set out in [principal contractor model](/answers/principal-contractor-model) and [how subcontractors are engaged and managed](/answers/how-subcontractors-are-engaged-and-managed).

The whole pack also forms part of the certified management system, which is what [what does ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certification mean for a contractor](/answers/what-does-iso-9001-iso-14001-and-iso-45001-certification-mean-for-a-co) describes in practice: a documented process that is followed and audited rather than a logo.

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