Important Health and Safety Documents For Construction
Health and Safety Documents For Construction — When it comes to Health and Safety documents, one size does not fit all. You need to find the documents that work best for your company, or the ones that apply to your construction project most specifically. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the top health and safety documents you can use to stay compliant with the law and protect your workers.
What is Health and Safety Document
Health and safety documents for construction help to ensure the safety of all involved in a building project. Without them, there is no way to know whether your building site is safe. These documents are also necessary for passing inspections and satisfying state, federal and local laws. There are many health and safety documents needed by different contractors depending on what type of work they do and what kind of environment they’re working in.
Safety is your number one concern when you’re in construction, whether you’re working on residential or commercial building. No matter what kind of work you do, health and safety documents need to be created and signed by everyone who’s involved. The safety team should review these documents before anyone can go back onto the site. They should also maintain copies for their records so that if an accident does happen, they have everything ready to go as soon as possible.
Why is Health and Safety Document Important
When it comes to construction and the workplace, there are a number of important health and safety documents that you will need. Work health and safety documents such as WHS plans and training are essential for your business. Safety documents list like asbestos reports and work medical assessments will help ensure that your team is safe when they are on-site or working in the office.
The Health and Safety document keeps record of activities happening in the worksite. It helps comply with organizations best practice, and organizational laws.
Also, these document are also necessary during site audit which is used to compare with what is required.
Health and safety document also helps document the safety management system (SMS) of the organization and communicate it internally to staff and externally to the organizations concerned. It enables the correct execution of safety procedures and thus the achievement of the organization’s safety objectives.
Safety records are maintained in order to provide documented safety assurance to all associated with, responsible for or dependent upon the services provided by the organization, and to the regulator. Safety records are needed to demonstrate that the SMS is operated according to the expectations.
Types of Health and Safety Document
Work Health and Safety documents are a set of documents that must be completed in order to ensure the safety of employees and other people who come into contact with the work area. There are different types of work health and safety documentation, including an OHS management plan, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), emergency plan and incident report form. The regulations for construction health and safety documents vary from state to state, but most contain an OHS management plan, emergency procedures, risk assessment and first aid procedures.
In order to make sure that you comply with regulations for construction health and safety documents, it’s important to have a good understanding of what is required. The first step is getting informed about what types of documents are used in your industry.
Health and Safety Document Control
Document control is one of the most common applications in compliance today. It allows you to manage the creation, approval, distribution and archiving of all controlled documents and processes, and is an integral part of environmental, health and safety management systems.
Here’s how the EHS system’s document control function can help you efficiently create and review document control records, route documents, and conduct change requests.
- Creating and reviewing document records
A good document control system can automate and manage documents efficiently by facilitating the dedicated workflows for all document types, each complete with its own routing options. It also provides the ability to configure “metadata” (essentially a high-level description of each document). It assigns a department that each document is associated with, as well as a priority level and ISO elements. It also records specific information, helps categorize and report on data, and helps to search and filter data so it can easily be found in the system and categorized.
The key is to look for an EHS system that will enable you to configure metadata based on document type, in a flexible manner that will allow you to change fields and add categories, key words and more.
- Routing documents
The automated document control system enables you to route documents along the workflow, with a process of approval and review that goes fluidly through the different phases of a workflow.
For example, delegation and escalation rules enable you to assign delegates if someone is unavailable, as well as escalate approvals to meet an impending due date. Escalation ensures work is kept on track and all deadlines are being met. Delegation allows an organization to go through the workflow, so if an employee is out of the office, the document will be assigned to designated substitute for approval.
This level of flexibility enables documents to make it through the system efficiently, whether key personnel are in the office or not.
- Change requests
Once documents are created and approved, there will most likely be changes in the future. A good document control system will have a change request workflow that includes revision review and approval. It also will hold the original document until the new document is changed — once the new document is approved, it will take the old document’s place.
Sometimes an organization will have changes that affect multiple documents. In this case, the system should be able to make a global change. This allows you to make multiple document changes within the same workflow and will show all documents to be changed, all affected areas, and where it will be changed.
READ: 10 Tips For Maintaining Health And Safety In A Construction Site
To effectively maintain consistency in processes, job descriptions, work instructions and more, an organization needs to ensure records are controlled. This makes document control a key feature in EHS systems. Using document control to manage your organization’s documents will ensure all tasks are kept on track and accomplished on time.
Important Health and Safety Document For Construction
• Method Statement
• Toolbox Talks Report
• Organization Health & Safety Plan
• Company Health & Safety Policy
• Contractors Responsibilities for Domestic Clients under CDM 2015 guidance
• Accident & Incident Record
• Accident & Incident Investigation Form
• PPE Register
• Toolbox Talks Register
• Toolbox Talks Training Record
• Plant Inspection Record
• Plant and equipment record
• Site Set Up Checklist
• Site Rules
• Site Safety Induction
• Site Induction Register
• Site Attendance (Visitors) Register
• Site Emergency Plan
• Fire Plan
• Report of Inspection Scaffold/Excavation
• Site Inspection
• Traffic management plan
• Health & Safety Audit
• Permit to Work Electricals
• Permit to Work Excavations (Permit to Dig)
• Permit to Work Asbestos
• Permit to Work Confined Spaces
• Permit to Work at Height
• Hot Works Permit
• Permit Register
• Excavation Pre-Works Checklist
• Excavation Inspection Record
• Scaffolding Inspection Record
• Ladder Inspection Record
• HAVS Exposure Record
• Scaffolding Handover Sheet
• Harness Inspection Record
• Lifting Equipment Inspection Record
• Contractor Questionnaire
• Project Waste Management Checklist
• Design Risk Management Document
• Training Record
You can develop these documents yourself or employ the service of a Health and Safety consultant to guide you in the process.
