Safety audit
Site safety inspection, safety walk
A structured, scored check of a site or an activity against a checklist, with fails photographed and turned into corrective actions with owners and dates.
A safety inspection looks at the site; a safety audit checks the system as well: is the paperwork there, do people know it, is what was promised actually happening. On a small site the words blur and the checklist does both. The weekly site walk is the commonest form: a competent person, ideally not the site manager whose site it is, works through access and egress, welfare, housekeeping, work at height, excavations, plant and lifting, electrics, fire, PPE, COSHH, traffic, signage and documentation, scoring each item, photographing each fail, and raising a corrective action with an owner and a date. Critical fails stop the activity.
The score is a trend, not a verdict; a site that moves from 70 to 90 over a month has fixed something, and a site stuck at 95 with the same three fails every week has a manager who has stopped looking. The record, with photographs, is the evidence of monitoring that CDM, SSIP and the insurer all ask for, and it is the document that shows, after an accident, whether the hazard had been seen.
Where it comes from
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 reg.5: arrangements for planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review.
- Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 reg.13 and reg.15: the duty to monitor the construction phase and the work.
Questions people ask
How often should a site be audited?
Weekly is the common rhythm for a live site, plus a short pre-start check every day and an audit after any change or incident. The frequency matters less than the follow-through on the actions.
Who should do it?
Someone competent and, where possible, not the person whose site it is. A visiting supervisor or the SHEQ lead sees what the regular eye has stopped noticing. Self-audit is better than none.
Safety audit, handled on a phone
SiteLynx puts the RAMS, permits, inspections, audits, plant checks and records behind every term in this glossary on the crew's phones, signed on site, with a PDF at the end. 14 days free, no card.
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