What is a SWMS in New Zealand?

New Zealand law does not require a document called a Safe Work Method Statement, and no New Zealand regulator defines one. The term is Australian. If a site has asked you for a SWMS, what they want is a written record of how you will do a particular task safely, and in New Zealand that document is usually called a Task Analysis.

The short answer

A SWMS is a Safe Work Method Statement: a written document that sets out the high risk work being done, the hazards it creates, the controls that will be used, and how those controls will be monitored and reviewed. In Australia it is a legal requirement for certain work. In New Zealand it is not a legal term at all, but plenty of sites ask for one, and the document they have in mind is the same document we call a Task Analysis.

There is no legal difference between a document headed Task Analysis and the same document headed Safe Work Method Statement. What matters is the content: the task, the hazards, the controls, the people and the sign-on.

Where the term comes from

The requirement sits in the Australian model Work Health and Safety Regulations. Under those regulations a SWMS must be prepared before high risk construction work starts, the work must be carried out in accordance with it, and it must be reviewed when the work changes. High risk construction work is a defined list and includes work at height above two metres, work on or near energised electrical installations, work in confined spaces, demolition, asbestos disturbance, trench work deeper than 1.5 metres, and work near powered mobile plant.

New Zealand did not adopt that regulation. The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 draws on the same Australian model law, and a good deal of the Act will look familiar to anyone who has worked across the Tasman, but the SWMS provisions were not carried across. No New Zealand regulation names the document, prescribes its contents or requires it for any class of work.

What New Zealand law asks for instead

The duty is in section 36 of the Act. A PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and of other people affected by the work. That is a duty about outcomes, not about paperwork, and the Act does not tell you which documents to keep.

The General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations 2016 add the method. Regulation 5 requires hazards to be identified. Section 30 of the Act requires risks to be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable, and regulation 6 sets the order for minimising what cannot be eliminated: substitution, isolation or engineering controls, then administrative controls, then personal protective equipment. The regulations also require those controls to be maintained and reviewed.

Nothing in either instrument names a document. What they do, read together, is describe something a written task-level assessment is the natural way to evidence. If an inspector or a main contractor asks how you decided a task was safe to do, the answer is far easier to give when it is written down against the task.

Where the paperwork does become mandatory

Two places are worth knowing. Regulation 26 of the Health and Safety in Employment Regulations 1995, which is still in force, lists particular hazardous work that must be notified to WorkSafe at least 24 hours before it starts: work from which a person could fall five metres or more, excavation deeper than 1.5 metres and deeper than it is wide, and certain tunnelling and lifting operations, each with its own exclusions. Separately, specific regulations carry their own record-keeping duties, for example asbestos work and hazardous substances. None of those call the record a SWMS, and notification is a separate obligation from writing the task document.

So what do you hand a site that asks for a SWMS?

Hand them the task-level document. If the heading on it says Task Analysis and the request said SWMS, say so once, in a sentence: this is our Task Analysis for the task, which is the New Zealand equivalent of the SWMS you have asked for. In practice almost no site argues, because the person asking is checking that the thinking has been done, not auditing the title block.

If you would rather not have the conversation at all, buy the heading they asked for. The same task is sold here as a Task Analysis and as a Safe Work Method Statement, at the same price, so you can order whichever the request names.

What the document should contain

• The task, broken into the steps it is actually done in.
• The hazard at each step, and what harm it could cause.
• The risk before controls, the controls, and the risk once they are in place.
• Who is responsible for each control, and what competence or licence the work needs.
• Plant and equipment, and the personal protective equipment required.
• Emergency arrangements, including rescue where the task needs it.
• A sign-on block, because the crew doing the work have to have been briefed on it.

That list is the same whichever heading sits at the top, and it is the same list the Australian regulations describe. The content converged long before the terminology did.

SWMS, Task Analysis, JSA and SSSP

Four terms circulate on New Zealand sites and they are not interchangeable in the way people often assume.

Task Analysis and Safe Work Method Statement are the same document under two names. JSA, a Job Safety Analysis, is also the same idea, and the term is more common in some sectors than others. All three are task-level: one document, one task.

An SSSP, a Site-Specific Safety Plan, is a different thing. It is the site-level plan: who is on site, how hazards get reported, how the businesses on site coordinate with each other, what happens in an emergency. The task-level documents are filed inside it. A main contractor asking for your SSSP and a main contractor asking for your SWMS are asking for two different documents, and sending the wrong one is the most common reason paperwork comes back.

Three things that get this wrong

1. Treating the template as the assessment. A template lists what a task usually involves. Your site decides what it does involve. Delete the hazards that are not present, add the ones that are, and fill the site fields before anyone signs it.
2. Writing it for the auditor instead of the crew. A document with twelve hazards that are not on site is harder to follow than one with the four that are, and the crew will stop reading it.
3. Filing it and leaving it. Both the Act and the regulations contemplate review. When the work changes, the weather changes the method, or something goes wrong, the document is supposed to change with it.

Does any of this mean you need less paperwork in New Zealand?

No. The absence of a prescribed document is not the absence of a duty. Section 36 is a broad duty and the question an inspector asks after an incident is what was reasonably practicable and whether it was done. A written task assessment is the ordinary way a small business shows its reasoning. The difference between the two countries is that Australia tells you to produce a particular document and New Zealand leaves the form to you.

Sources

• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, s36 (primary duty of care) and s22 (reasonably practicable)
• Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, regs 5 to 8
• Health and Safety in Employment Regulations 1995, reg 26 (particular hazardous work requiring notice)
• Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Australia), Part 6.3, safe work method statements for high risk construction work
• WorkSafe New Zealand, guidance on identifying, assessing and managing work risks
• WorkSafe New Zealand, notifiable work and particular hazardous work

This guide is general information about New Zealand health and safety law as at the review date. It is not legal advice and it does not describe your site. Confirm what applies to you with WorkSafe New Zealand or your adviser.