Trades / Plastering
Risk assessment and method statement for plastering and rendering
Plastering looks low risk until you total up the silica dust, the repeated overhead work and the towers. A plastering RAMS is mostly about the hazards that accumulate over a week, not the dramatic ones.
£29 per document. Written for your job in two to three minutes, as an editable Word file and a PDF. Free preview first.
What a plastering RAMS has to cover
Not every job needs all of these, and the document only carries what your job actually involves. These are the ones that come up for plasterers.
- Silica and gypsum dust from mixing, sanding and removing old plaster
- Cement burns and dermatitis from prolonged skin contact with wet render
- Working at height on towers, hop-ups and scaffolds for ceilings and external render
- Overhead work, and the musculoskeletal strain of skimming a ceiling all day
- Wet floors and trailing leads in an occupied house
- Manual handling of bagged materials and full buckets
- Electrical safety of mixers and sanders on site power
Jobs you can pick
Ten common plastering and rendering jobs, or describe your own in a sentence or two. Either way the document is written around what you describe, including the site, who else is about and how long it takes.
- Skim walls and ceilings
- Full re-plaster of a room
- Plasterboard and dry lining
- Board and skim a ceiling
- Sand and cement render outside
- Coloured render (monocouche or silicone)
- Skim over an Artex ceiling
- Patch repairs after rewiring or plumbing
- Coving and cornice
- Floor screed
- Something else — describe it yourself
The legislation cited for plastering and rendering
This is the complete list your document may cite — 11 entries, kept by hand for plasterers. The system cannot cite anything outside it, and a document that tries is rejected and written again. Each one only appears in your RAMS if it applies to the job you describe.
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
- General duties on employers and the self-employed to protect workers and anyone else affected by the work (ss.2–3), and on workers to take reasonable care (s.7).
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
- Requires a suitable and sufficient risk assessment before work starts (reg 3) and operatives given adequate information and training — this RAMS records the significant findings.
- Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992
- PPE must be suitable for the risk, correctly fitted, maintained and provided free of charge (including to limb (b) workers since the 2022 amendment), and used as the last line of defence.
- Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013
- Deaths, specified injuries, over-seven-day injuries, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences arising from the work must be reported to HSE.
- Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981
- Adequate first-aid equipment and a trained first-aider or appointed person must be available for the duration of the work.
- Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015
- Plastering is construction work: plan, manage and monitor it, induct operatives, and provide welfare facilities (Schedule 2).
- Work at Height Regulations 2005
- Ceilings and high walls need hop-ups, podium steps, trestle platforms or mobile towers suited to the height and duration, erected and used by trained operatives.
- Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992
- Plasterboard sheets and 25 kg bags are a major manual handling risk, especially overhead: use board lifters, trolleys and team lifts.
- Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
- Mixing plaster and render creates dust (silica in sand and cement); wet cement and lime cause burns and dermatitis; sanding joints creates fine dust.
- Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012
- Removing or preparing old textured coatings (e.g. Artex) and ceiling boards in pre-2000 buildings can disturb asbestos — check the survey or sample first (reg 5).
- Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998
- Paddle mixers, board saws and sanders must be suitable, maintained and used by trained operatives, on 110 V or battery power.
Why a fixed list instead of asking the model
Ask a language model which regulations apply to plastering and rendering and you get a confident list, some of it right and some of it regulations that were replaced, renumbered, or never existed. On a document that reaches a principal contractor, a wrong citation is worse than no citation — it is the first thing a competent reviewer spots.
So the list above is given to the system as the only thing it may cite, and every document is checked against it afterwards.
Other trades
Your plastering and rendering RAMS
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