Someone's asked you for a SWMS before you can get on site, and you're not entirely sure what they're after. Here's the plain version, without the regulator-speak. Everything below comes from the regulators themselves and the links go back to them.
What a SWMS actually is
A Safe Work Method Statement is a document that sets out three things: the high risk work you're about to do, the hazards that come with it, and what you're doing to control them.
That's it. It's not a procedure and it's not a manual. Safe Work Australia describes it as an administrative control — a tool supervisors and workers use to confirm the right controls are in place before work starts, and to keep checking they stay in place. It sits on top of the real controls rather than replacing them. If there's a safer way to do the job, you do the job the safer way. The SWMS is how everyone agrees on that and signs off.
Safe Work Australia also notes it's a different thing from a JSA or a Safe Operating Procedure, even though plenty of sites use the words interchangeably.
What one looks like
Most SWMS are a landscape table. There's a header with the business, the site and the date, a section identifying which high risk work applies, then the job broken into steps — each with its hazards, a risk rating, the control measures and who's responsible — and a sign-on area at the bottom for everyone on the job.
Formats vary a fair bit, so treat any example as one way of laying it out rather than the required format.
When you need one
A SWMS is only legally required for high risk construction work. The model WHS Regulations list 18 activities that qualify, and Victoria runs its own OHS Regulations with 19.
SafeWork SA publishes the full list of 18. It covers the work that hurts people most often:
- any risk of a fall of more than 2 metres
- work on or near energised electrical installations or services
- work in or near a trench or shaft deeper than 1.5 metres, or a tunnel
- demolition of a load-bearing element
- anything likely to disturb asbestos
- work in or near a confined space
- tilt-up or precast concrete
- work in an area where powered mobile plant is moving
- work on or next to a road, railway or other traffic corridor in use
- work in or near water with a risk of drowning
If one of those applies, Safe Work Australia says the SWMS has to exist before the work starts. If none of them apply you don't legally need one, though the general duty to manage risks still applies either way.
One SWMS can cover a job involving several of these at once. You don't need a separate document for every hazard on the same task.
What has to be in it
Safe Work Australia sets out four things a SWMS must do:
That fourth one is the easiest to skim past. Listing a control isn't the whole requirement — the regulations also ask you to say how it gets checked.
Controls go in a set order: eliminate the hazard first, then substitute, isolate or engineer it out, then administrative controls, with PPE last. Hard hats at the bottom of the list, not the top.
Who writes it
Whoever is actually doing the work. Safe Work Australia's guidance is that the person responsible for carrying out the high risk work is best placed to prepare it — generally the builder for their workers, and each subcontractor for theirs.
The part people skip: it has to be prepared in consultation with the workers doing the job. Not written in the office and handed out. The blokes doing the work know the hazards, and the regulations expect them to have had a say.
If you're a sub on a bigger site, the principal contractor has to obtain your SWMS before your high risk work starts. That's usually why someone's chasing you for it.
Using a generic SWMS
You can use a generic SWMS for high risk work you carry out regularly. SafeWork NSW says so directly — but it adds that to comply, it “must be reviewed and take into account site-specific hazards and risks.”
So the starting point is fine. Leaving it untouched isn't. SafeWork NSW also expects a review when the work process changes, when the site throws up new or unforeseen hazards, or when you change a control — again, in consultation with the crew.
Where it has to be kept
At the workplace, available, until the work it relates to is finished. If an inspector asks, you need to be able to produce it.
And the part most people don't realise: SafeWork NSW states plainly that a SWMS can be kept electronically, as long as it's readily available to workers. It doesn't have to be a damp sheet of paper in the ute.
Where digital forms help
This is the part we actually know something about, because it's what we build.
Most SWMS trouble isn't people doing dangerous work. It's a document that was filled in properly, signed by everyone, and then nobody can find it eight months later when it's needed. Or it's in a folder in the office while the crew who signed it are forty minutes away.
A SWMS only does its job if the people doing the work have read it, signed it, and can get to it. Shadow Forms takes the SWMS you already use — the one that matches how your crew actually works — and puts it on their phones. Same document, same wording, filled in and signed on site, stored and searchable whether you had signal or not.
One thing worth saying plainly: we build forms software, not safety advice. The above is a plain-English summary of what the regulators publish, and the links go to them. For your own site and your own job, check with your state regulator or someone qualified.
Send us the SWMS you're using now and we'll set the first one up for you, free. No obligation, and you keep your own form.
