Method statements: what the paperwork should actually tell someone
A method statement is supposed to be the instructions for a job. Not a document you email a client so the job can start. That difference is the whole thing, and you can usually tell which one you’re holding inside about thirty seconds.
I’m not against the paperwork, by the way. A good one is genuinely useful and it’s the difference between a job that runs and a job that stops twice before dinner. But most of what gets handed to me isn’t that.
The one that could be for any job
I’ve read plenty that would fit any site in the country. Take the company name off the top and you couldn’t say whether it was for a roof strip, a machine install or a tank clean. Pages about safe systems of work, competent operatives and compliance with all relevant legislation. Nothing about the actual job.
They end up that way because somebody asked for one. The client wants paperwork before you turn up, so paperwork is what they get. It goes in a folder, everybody signs the back page, and nobody opens it again.
Write it for the bloke doing the work
Ask yourself who’s actually reading it. It isn’t the client and it isn’t me. It’s the lad who pulls onto site at seven on Monday. If it doesn’t tell him something he didn’t already know, it’s done nothing.
That one question changes how the whole thing reads. You stop writing “operatives will ensure the area is segregated” and start writing where the barriers go, who puts them out, and what happens to the gangway that runs straight through the middle of it.
Go through the job in order
The good ones read like somebody talking you through the day. Arrive, park there, sign in, isolate this, drop the guard, lift the motor with the gantry, and on through to the point where the job’s handed back and the guard goes on again.
Doing it in order is what catches the gaps. You get to step four and realise nobody’s said who’s holding the load while step five happens. You’d never spot that in a list of controls, because a list has no sequence and real work does.
It’s also where the risk assessment and the method statement stop being two separate bits of paper. The assessment says the lift is the dangerous part. The method statement says how you’re doing the lift. If a control in one doesn’t show up in the other, one of them’s wrong.
The bits that go missing
A few things drop out almost every time. Equipment gets called “suitable lifting equipment” rather than which gantry, rated for what, and when it was last inspected. Nobody says who’s in charge if there’s a disagreement halfway through. And there’s rarely a word about what happens when the job doesn’t go to plan, which is the part that most needs writing down. If the isolation won’t hold or the bolts are seized, does the crew stop and ring somebody, or do they work it out between them? Say which. That’s the sentence that stops a lad improvising at four on a Friday.
It’s worth nothing if it stays in the van
Here’s where most of them fall over. The document’s fine, and then it never gets read to anybody. A sheet goes round for signatures at the start of the shift and that counts as the briefing.
A proper briefing takes five minutes and sounds like a conversation. Here’s what we’re doing, here’s the order, here’s the bit that can hurt you, here’s what we do if it goes wrong. Then ask them what they’d change. They’re the ones who’ve done the job before, and they’ll tell you the lift is easier from the other side, or that the isolation point sits behind a rack that’s been full for two years. Write it in. A method statement the crew has improved is one the crew will follow.
When the job changes, the paper changes
Jobs change. You get on site and the layout isn’t what you were told, or the weather turns, or the part that was meant to come off in one piece doesn’t. The method statement covered the job you thought you were doing.
This is where “we’ve always done it that way” does its damage, because the crew carries on and reworks the job in their heads while the paperwork sits in the van describing something else. Stopping and reworking it properly takes twenty minutes. I’ve never seen those twenty minutes cost anywhere near what happens when nobody stops.
So here’s a test you can run this week. Hand one of yours to somebody who’s never done that job and ask them to talk you through their day from it. Whatever they can’t tell you is what’s missing. If you’d rather somebody just read one properly and tell you where it’s thin, book a stress-free chat.