If one of your crew is hurt on site, the first questions are whether the job was risk assessed and run to a safe system of work, and whether the person was trained. This pack puts the answers on paper for the nine hazards below.
Up to four of your people assessed for competence in one day, on your own site and machines, with minimum downtime. Plus a written safe-system pack for each topic.
A PHW assessor takes your people through the nine hazard areas below, questions each of them, sets a written knowledge test and signs the assessment records. Everyone who passes gets a PHW certificate with a QR code that opens a live verification page, so a customer or principal contractor can check it for themselves. The records stay with you as your evidence.
Nine hazard areas, each with its own risk assessment, safe system of work, training and assessment.
Work at Height Regulations 2005
The hierarchy: avoid work at height, prevent falls using an existing safe place, prevent falls using work equipment, minimise the distance and consequences of a fall, and instruction and training last. Collective protection such as a guardrail always comes before personal protection such as a harness.
COSHH 2002
Cutting kerbs, block and slabs with a Stihl saw, drilling, chasing and sweeping up produce respirable crystalline silica against a workplace exposure limit of 0.1 mg/m³ as an 8-hour time-weighted average. Control by elimination or substitution, water suppression and on-tool extraction, with RPE only as the last line and requiring face-fit testing.
Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005; Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005
Hand-arm vibration exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² A(8) and exposure limit value of 5 m/s² A(8), with health surveillance from the action value. Noise lower and upper exposure action values of 80 and 85 dB(A) and an exposure limit value of 87 dB(A), with health surveillance wherever the risk assessment shows a risk to hearing.
Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (as amended)
Avoid hazardous handling, assess what cannot be avoided using the TILE headings (task, individual, load, environment), and reduce the risk. There is no legal maximum weight.
PUWER 1998
Everything from a chisel to a disc cutter: suitable, maintained, inspected and guarded, with adequate training for every user and a pre-use check before each use. A Stihl saw or an angle grinder has its own rules: a guard that is fitted, a wheel rated for at least the machine's speed, and only a trained person mounting it.
Abrasive wheels pack →COSHH 2002, regulations 6, 7, 11 and 12
Wet cement is strongly alkaline, around pH 12 to 13, and causes chemical burns and dermatitis that often go unfelt until the damage is done. Controls include waterproof gloves, waterproof trousers worn over the boots, and washing off any contact immediately.
CDM 2015, regulation 22 and Schedule 3; HSE guidance HSG47
Never enter an unsupported excavation whatever the depth, keep spoil and loads back from the edge, inspect before each shift, and follow the plans, locate, mark, dig carefully method for buried services, treating every service as live.
Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
Battery tools or a 110 volt centre-tapped-earth supply for portable tools wherever practicable, an RCD as a further safeguard where 230 volts cannot be avoided, and no damaged or taped cables. Keep every part of a machine, at its full height and reach, clear of overhead lines by the safe clearance distance. The owner of the line will advise it.
Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012
Awareness training for anyone whose work could disturb asbestos: what it looks like, where it turns up and what to do. Asbestos work itself is for licensed or specifically trained people. If asbestos is found or suspected, stop work, leave the area, prevent access and report it, and always ask for the asbestos register before starting work on a building built or refurbished before 2000.
Every document, grouped by what it is for.
Running a mini digger, dumper or telescopic handler as well? Operators train on these machine courses, which are separate from this pack. Lorries, loading and keeping people clear of moving vehicles are in the Workplace Transport pack.
Risks, law and the full range of PHW products for construction firms in one place.
HSE prosecutions in this line of work.
Nominal fine of £800 (individual sentenced to suspended imprisonment) + £2,000 costs · 2026-08-11
A telehandler operator reversed over a lift supervisor walking back from the site welfare compound, causing fatal injuries.
Read the case →£20,000 + £4,824 costs · 2026-07-14
A dumper truck was driven into an unprotected excavation and overturned after the company had told workers not to wear seat belts (the driver was thrown out and suffered crushing leg injuries).
Read the case →£400,000 + £8,974 costs · 2026-06-16
A 20-tonne tipper truck fell about two metres off the edge of an excavation ramp at an HS2 site where there was no edge protection, after the contractor changed its working area and traffic route on the morning of the incident.
Read the case →