RAMS risk assessment and method statement is the full name, and the order of the words is the order of the work. The risk assessment is written first, from the walk of the task on the site, and finds the hazards and the controls. The method statement is built from those controls, placing each at a step. Both live in one file with one header, cross-referenced by hazard number, ending in the crew's signatures. The HSE's guidance, cited below, gives risk assessment as five steps: identify hazards, assess the risks, control the risks, record your findings, review the controls, and says that if you employ 5 or more people you must record your significant findings. The risk assessment and method statement tool on this site prints the file from your task, free.
The assessment first
The site's hazards, numbered, with who is at risk, how, likelihood, severity, control and residual risk. Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, cited below, requires every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees, and regulation 3(6) requires an employer with five or more employees to record the significant findings and any group of employees especially at risk.
The method from it
Setting up, doing, making safe, each step naming the control it applies by hazard number, with plant, permits, PPE and emergency arrangements around them. A control in the assessment that has no step in the method is the gap a reviewer finds.
One file
Header with job, site, task, dates, author, reviewer, version; the two halves; the sign-on. Under CDM, cited below, the principal contractor approves the file against the plan. A file with two headers is two documents that will drift.
Kept
Signed, versioned, against the job, with the review date. DailyLogDesk Pro keeps it; the tool prints it. From the vendors' own pricing pages, cited below: SafetyCulture lists its Premium plan at $29 per seat per month billed monthly or $24 billed annually, with a free plan for small teams; Contractor Foreman lists its Basic plan at $49 per month for one user. DailyLogDesk Pro is $29 per month for the whole site team.
Questions people ask about rams risk assessment and method statement
Why is the order important?
A method written first describes the usual way; the assessment written afterwards justifies it; the hazard the usual way never controlled is in neither.
Can the same person write both?
Yes, and usually does; the discipline is the order.
Is the tool free?
Yes, without an account.