What is a SWMS?

When a SWMS is actually required

The trigger is high risk construction work, which the model regulations define as a list of specific activities rather than as a general standard of danger. Work involving a risk of a person falling more than two metres, work on or near energised electrical installations, work in or near a confined space, demolition, asbestos, tilt up and precast concrete, work on or near pressurised gas mains, work in an area with movement of powered mobile plant, and several others are on the list. Each state and territory administers its own version, so the list and the detail should be checked against the regulator where the work is happening. The practical consequence is that the question is not how risky does this feel, but does this activity appear on the list, and that is a question with a checkable answer.

What makes a SWMS useful rather than filed

A statement that matters is written for the people doing the work, in the order they will do it. Each step of the activity, the hazards that step creates, the controls applied, and who is responsible for putting each control in place. Controls should be specific enough to check on site: an anchor point rated and installed at a named location beats working at heights procedures followed. The hierarchy of controls belongs in the thinking rather than in the document as a heading, so if a hazard is controlled only by personal protective equipment, the statement should say why elimination, substitution and engineering controls were not used. That question, answered honestly, is where most of the safety value in the exercise actually sits.

Consultation is part of the obligation

A SWMS prepared in an office and handed to a crew has missed a requirement rather than just an opportunity. The workers doing the task have to be consulted in developing it, and they are usually the only people who know which control will be quietly abandoned by ten in the morning because it makes the job impossible. Sign on by the crew records that they were briefed on the statement, which is different from having written it. Where subcontractors are involved, the principal contractor generally has to be given a copy before the work starts, and the statement has to be available at the workplace while the work is being done and kept for a defined period after.

Why generic statements fail

The commonest failure is a template downloaded and reused across sites with the site name changed, which produces a document that describes hazards that are not present and misses the ones that are. A close second is a SWMS covering an entire project rather than one activity, so the controls are too general to apply to anything. A third is a statement that is never reviewed when conditions change, when the weather turns, the sequence shifts or a control turns out not to work. Review is not an annual event here; it is triggered by the work changing. A fourth is length: a forty page statement will not be read at a toolbox talk, and a document nobody reads provides no defence to anybody.

Building a SWMS as a document

A SWMS is a structured tabular document, usually three to eight pages, with the activity breakdown as the central table: step, hazard, risk rating, control, responsible person. Tables are one of the forty five component types and a five column table prints well in portrait. Callouts have four variants, which covers marking a stop work trigger and a high risk step without inventing a colour code. One signature block party is one signer, so a statement signed by the supervisor and each crew member needs a party per person. At this length the document can carry a contents list, and contents are only used on long documents with headings that match exactly.

Questions people ask