RAMS stands for Risk Assessment and Method Statement — a paired document in which a contractor sets out the hazards of a specific piece of work and the step-by-step method by which they will carry it out safely. In UK construction it is the standard evidence a subcontractor provides before mobilising, and the standard thing a principal contractor asks for before granting site access.
The term itself appears nowhere in legislation. CDM 2015 never says "RAMS." The industry built the document around a set of duties that do exist, and understanding which duty each half of a RAMS discharges is what turns it from a box-tick into something useful.
What the two halves actually are
The risk assessment identifies the hazards in the work, who might be harmed, and what controls reduce the risk. Its legal root is not CDM at all — it is Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which requires every employer to "make a suitable and sufficient assessment of… the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work" and, separately, the risks to people not in his employment arising from the conduct of his undertaking.
A jurisdiction note. Both instruments behind a RAMS are Great Britain instruments. Regulation 3 of CDM 2015 applies those Regulations "in Great Britain", and Regulation 3 of the Management Regulations carries an E+W+S extent marker. Northern Ireland has its own pair — the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (in operation since 1 August 2016) and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000, which SR 2016/146 itself names as "the Management Regulations" for NI purposes. If you work there, check the NI position rather than assuming the citations here apply.
The method statement describes how the work will be done: the sequence of operations, the plant and equipment, who supervises, and how each control from the risk assessment is applied in practice.
They are bound together because neither is much use alone. A risk assessment listing "fall from height — use edge protection" tells nobody when the edge protection goes up or who checks it. A method statement without the underlying assessment is a work plan that has not been tested against the hazards.
Which CDM duties RAMS actually serve
Four provisions do the work.
Regulation 15(2) — the contractor's planning duty. Every contractor "must plan, manage and monitor construction work carried out either by the contractor or by workers under the contractor's control, to ensure that, so far as is reasonably practicable, it is carried out without risks to health and safety." The RAMS is how a subcontractor evidences that planning.
Regulation 15(3) — consistency with the site. On a project with more than one contractor, a contractor must comply with "(a) any directions given by the principal designer or the principal contractor; and (b) the parts of the construction phase plan that are relevant to that contractor's work on the project." A method statement that contradicts your site sequencing is not compliant, however well written.
Regulation 15(9) — information to workers. The information a contractor provides to workers "must include—(a) a suitable site induction, where not already provided by the principal contractor; (b) the procedures to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger to health and safety; (c) information on risks to health and safety—(i) identified by the risk assessment under regulation 3 of the Management Regulations..." This is the line that connects the RAMS to the operatives who have to follow it. A RAMS filed and never briefed out has not discharged this duty.
Regulation 8(3) — the appointer's duty. "A person who is responsible for appointing a designer or contractor to carry out work on a project must take reasonable steps to satisfy themselves that the designer or contractor fulfils the conditions in paragraph (1)" — the skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability test in Regulation 8(1). Reading a subcontractor's RAMS is one of the most direct ways you take those reasonable steps. A RAMS that shows the subcontractor has not understood the hazards of their own trade is a competence signal, and it arrives before anyone is exposed.
Who writes RAMS and who reviews them
The subcontractor writes them. The duty in Regulation 15(2) sits with the contractor carrying out the work — they know their method, their plant and their people. A principal contractor who writes a subcontractor's RAMS for them has not improved compliance; they have taken on the risk of a method they will not be executing.
The principal contractor reviews and accepts them. That review is a genuine duty under Regulation 8(3), not an administrative courtesy, and it is the half of the process that most often goes unrecorded.
The practical consequence: if you are a principal contractor, your obligation is not to produce good RAMS. It is to be able to show that you asked for them, read them, judged them adequate, and did so before the work started.
How to review a RAMS in about ten minutes
You are not re-doing the subcontractor's assessment. You are checking five things.
1. Is it for this job? Check the site address, the scope description and the dates. Generic RAMS — a template with the previous project's name edited out — are the most common failure and usually the most visible. If the described access arrangements do not match your site, it was not written for your site.
2. Does the scope match what they are actually doing? A RAMS covering "groundworks" does not cover the drainage connection added at the last minute. Scope drift between the document and the instruction is where gaps open.
3. Do the controls match the hazards they themselves identified? Read the risk assessment, then read the method statement, and check every significant hazard in the first has a corresponding action in the second. "PPE will be worn" against a confined-space entry is not a control measure.
4. Does it conflict with the construction phase plan? Sequencing, exclusion zones, permit requirements, delivery routes. This is the Regulation 15(3) check, and it is the one only you can do — the subcontractor cannot see the other trades' programmes.
5. Is anything promised that does not exist yet? A method relying on a working platform, a permit system or a banksman that is not yet on site is a plan, not a control. Note the dependency and check it before the work starts.
If any of the five fails, return it for revision. Returning a RAMS is not obstructive — it is the mechanism working.
What to record, and why it matters more than the document
The document is the subcontractor's evidence. Your evidence is the review record. At minimum:
- Which subcontractor, which work package, which project
- The date the RAMS was received
- The version or revision reference
- Who reviewed it, and on what date
- Whether it was accepted or returned, and if returned, what changed
- The date work actually started
That last pairing — reviewed on the 4th, started on the 8th — is the one an inspector or a Tier 1 auditor is really testing. "We always review them" is a description of intent. A dated record is evidence.
Common failures worth naming
- Accepted but not read. The volume problem. Forty documents across fourteen subcontractors, and review quality quietly degrades until generic RAMS pass through untouched.
- Received after mobilisation. The point of the review is to assess risk before exposure. A RAMS that lands in week two is a post-hoc justification.
- Never briefed to the workforce. Regulation 15(9) is explicit that workers get the information. A signed induction or toolbox-talk record closes this; a filed PDF does not.
- Not revisited when scope changes. Material change to the work should trigger a revised RAMS. Keep both versions — you may need to show what was in force on a particular date, not just what is current now.
- Treated as a tender document. RAMS requested at tender and never refreshed at mobilisation are describing a job that was priced, not the job being built.
The short version
RAMS is an industry convention built on real duties. The subcontractor writes it under Regulation 15(2). It must be consistent with your construction phase plan under 15(3), briefed to workers under 15(9), and reviewed by you as part of the competence check under 8(3). Getting the document is the easy half. Being able to prove you reviewed it before work started is the half that fails.
For the risk assessment side in depth, see our construction risk assessment guide. For what a method statement must contain and how to review it, see our method statements in construction guide. For where RAMS sits in the wider document set you collect before mobilisation, see our subcontractor onboarding documents guide, and for how it connects to site sequencing, our construction phase plan guide.
SubComply is being built to track subcontractor documents including RAMS — recording what was received, who reviewed it and when, so the review record exists without anyone maintaining a spreadsheet. Join the waitlist to be notified when it launches.
Sources
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/51), Regulation 8
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/51), Regulation 15
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/3242), Regulation 3
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/51), Regulation 3 (application in Great Britain)
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (SR 2016/146)
- HSE L153 — Managing health and safety in construction: CDM 2015. Guidance on Regulations
This guide is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. For project-specific compliance questions, consult a qualified health and safety professional.
Last reviewed: 16 September 2026