How to use the templates

A template arrives with the task already broken into steps and the usual hazards and controls filled in. Your job is the part only you can do: deciding which of it is true on your site, and adding what is missing.

1. Open it and save your own copy

The files are Word .docx with no locked fields and no password. Keep the original untouched and work on a copy named for the job, so the next site starts from a clean version rather than the last one you edited. Add your logo in the header field on page one.

2. Fill the general details

Business, site address, the specific task, the date, the supervisor. This sounds trivial and is the first thing a site manager checks: a document that could describe any job on any site reads as a form, and one that names this job reads as a plan.

3. Work through the hazards line by line

Delete the hazards that are not present on your site. Add the ones that are and the template could not know about: the neighbour’s driveway, the live board nobody isolated, the slope the plant has to cross.

Then read the controls against the hierarchy of control. Could the hazard be removed rather than controlled? If a control cannot be checked by looking at it, it is not a control. “Take care” fails that test; “edge protection installed to the north and west edges” passes it.

4. Set the risk ratings honestly

Each step carries a rating before controls and after. The point of the second number is to show which risks are still significant once everything reasonable has been done, because those are the ones that need supervision on the day. A document where every residual rating is low tells a reader the ratings were not thought about.

5. Check the notifiable work question

Some work must be notified to WorkSafe at least 24 hours before it starts. That decision is separate from the risk assessment and carries a clock. The ten categories and their exclusions.

6. Brief the crew and take the sign-on

Read it with the people doing the work, before the work starts, and change it where they tell you something you did not know. That conversation is the part the Act is interested in: engagement under ss58 to 59 is an ongoing process of seeking and considering workers’ views, and the signed page records that the briefing happened rather than proving the duty was met.

A document nobody has read is a piece of paper. One the crew helped finish is a plan they will follow.

7. Review it when the job changes

New task, new hazard, new crew, an incident or a near miss: revisit the document rather than working to a version that describes a job you are no longer doing. Add your own review date and version when you complete it.

What we do not claim

A template is a starting point. We do not claim a completed document meets your duties on its own, is endorsed by WorkSafe, or will be accepted by any particular main contractor or prequalification scheme. Those decisions belong to other people applying their own criteria to your completed document and your business.

Not legal advice. See the Terms for what we supply and what remains your responsibility.