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First of all, what exactly is a construction health and safety plan? It is basically a plan prepared before construction work is started to help avert accidents or disasters in the construction site. In a Construction Health and Safety Plan, hazards are identified, assessed, controlled, and possibly eliminated in a process that is referred to as risk assessment management. This plan is integral for principal contractors to manage their workplace health and safety obligations, which is why they are required to prepare such plans before they even begin on construction.

So how does a principal contractor go about in preparing this construction health and safety plan? Below are listed the steps on how this highly significant plan is prepared.
1. First, one must know what exactly the plan needs to have stated in it. These important details would be the following:

• Construction site address
• Name and address of the principal contractor
• Business number of the principal contractor
• Planned start date
• Estimated duration of construction work
• The type of construction being done
• Construction site rules and regulations
• The risks the principal contractor is expected to manage
• Proposed measures to control the risks stated
• How the measures of control will be implemented
• Methods to monitor review the measures of control
• Strategies for public safety
• Emergency procedures

2. Once all these details are kept in mind, the principal contractor should go around the construction site to look out for what may be potential hazards present when certain construction tasks are being undertaken. This is simply called ‘identifying hazards’ and is the first step in risk assessment management.

3. Next, assess the risks that you have identified. Decide the level of danger a potential hazard poses by gauging how seriously someone could be affected by this and the likelihood of this happening. After rating each potential hazard, you would know which hazards should be priority in preparing measures of control for.

4. Basing on the priority listing for potential hazards you have prepared, you must enact measures of control that eliminate or at the very least, minimize the risks. You may control the hazards by eliminating the hazard, substituting the hazard with a lesser one, engineering out the hazard, use administrative controls, or use personal protective equipment. These are also listed according to highest preference to the least preferred, with ‘eliminating the hazard’ as the most preferred measure of hazard control.

5. Always look out for hazards. Constantly try to identify new potential hazards and set new control measures for these newly identified hazards. It is to be expected finding new hazards that were not earlier identified during the course of the construction period.

6. Review your plan and check that all the required details listed in number 1 are found in it. Make sure that the plan is written in a way that makes it easily understandable.

Know that the principal contractor cannot start work with construction unless the health and safety plan has been discussed or a copy has been given to all the relevant people participating in the construction job. Also, it is the principal contractor’s duty to update or inform all relevant personnel every time an amendment has been made on the health and safety plan.

One of the key principles of health and safety management in construction works is risk assessment management – the process of identification, assessment and elimination or control of hazards in the workplace. HS risk management must be documented in the construction safety plan for the project.

Hazard and risk are terms that often confused; however there is a difference between them:

• A hazard is anything (including work practices or procedures) that has the potential to harm the health or safety of a person.
• A risk is the likelihood that death, injury or illness might result because of a hazard.

The risk management process

Risk management is a process of identification, assessment and elimination or control of hazards in the workplace.

The principal contractor is responsible to conduct a risk assessment before works commence on site and after the scope of works has been defined.

How is it done?

You should involve your work teams in the process of risk management, this will:

• get the whole team involved in the process
• give you many different points of view
• encourage safe thinking right across the workforce
• help you comply with the health and safety laws

There are four steps in the risk assessment process:

1. Identifying Hazards

Walk around the workplace and look what potential hazards may be present in undertaken each task.

2. Assessing the risks, how dangerous are the hazards you have identified?

Judge how dangerous they could be. Ask yourself how seriously someone could be affected and how likely this is to happen, this will give you a risk rating to be used to give a priority for hazards to be controlled

You can use the chart below as a guide to assess the hazards that you have identified.

3. Eliminate or control hazards – DO SOMETHING

Implement control measures to eliminate or at list minimise the risks in line with the following hierarchy of controls:

Number 1 Eliminate the hazard being the most preferred and No. 5 is the last resort and the least preferred

4. Monitor

Stay in the lookout, always anticipate hazards. Review and update periodically the Risk Assessment. Hazards that are identified must be controlled and not identifying the hazards is not an excuse for not controlling them.

This is not the only way to do a risk assessment, there are other methods eg the HSE’s five steps to risk assessment; you adopt a method that suits the activities or trade were you are involved with.