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Groundworks RAMS Builder
Groundworks risk assessment and method statement
Prepare RAMS for service location, excavation, backfilling and empty duct installation. Add your site details, edit useful suggestions and review the PDF draft.
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Prepare the Groundworks RAMS
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What will you be doing?
More details
Pick everything this RAMS covers. The questions that follow are chosen from what you tick here.
What a Groundworks RAMS covers
Groundworks here means the early digging on a site: finding buried services, shallow excavation by machine or hand, backfilling and compacting, and laying empty ducts for services to come later.
- Locate services
- Shallow excavate
- Backfill/compact
- Lay empty service ducts
Suggested steps and hazards for Groundworks
What it offers for shallow excavate before you have answered anything.
Set out the dig against service marks
- Check the excavation line against the plans and marks before breaking the surface.
- Stop if the service information and the ground do not agree.
Hazard
Striking a buried service while starting the excavation
Who might be harmed and how
The dig team and people nearby
Controls in place
- Use the service records and survey marks together.
- Keep the work stopped while an unexpected service is identified.
Checking the set-out against the marks helps prevent striking a buried service.
HSE: Excavations Keep spoil and plant off the edge
- Put spoil, materials and plant where their weight will not load the excavation edge.
- Keep the route beside the dig clear.
Hazard
The excavation side collapsing under spoil, plant or vehicle loading
Who might be harmed and how
The dig team, drivers and people near the excavation
Controls in place
- Set a clear edge exclusion area.
- Do not park or tip close to the sides.
Keeping weight off the edge reduces the risk of the excavation side collapsing.
HSE: Excavations Watch for asbestos in the ground
- Old fill and demolition ground can hold asbestos cement sheet, fragments and old pipes.
- Ask for the site ground report or asbestos survey before you break ground.
- If you turn up cement sheet, rope lagging or anything you do not recognise, stop and cover it over.
Hazard
Breathing asbestos fibres from buried sheet, pipes or old fill
Who might be harmed and how
The dig team and anyone downwind
Controls in place
- Do not move or break suspect material; get it checked first.
- Licensed work is not for this method; hand it to a licensed contractor.
Asbestos cement pipes and demolition fill are common in ground around anything built before 2000.
HSE: Asbestos, actions by job role
What the builder asks about Groundworks
Your answers decide which steps, hazards and controls it suggests.
The job
- What service information do you have?
- What are you excavating?
- Whose duct detail applies?
- What fill and layer detail applies?
Where
- What route and protection are specified?
- What could change the ground?
- What pipes or cables run under or beside the ground you are working on?
How it’s done
- What will you stand on to reach the work?
- What is under the fill?
- How will you locate the services?
- How will you dig?
- How will you compact the fill?
- Will you need to uncover a service?
- What will hold the sides?
What your Groundworks RAMS includes
Method statement
The sequence of the work, step by step. The suggestions are a starting point; you write the method for the job as it will be done.
Risk assessment
Each hazard, who could be harmed, the controls in place and any further action. There is no risk score: you judge each row against the real site, and adding a hazard does not put its controls in place.
PDF draft for review
The document as you left it, for someone competent to check. A download is not approval and not permission to start work.