An excavation RAMS is not a general RAMS with a paragraph about trenches. Every section changes: the competencies are different, the hazards include things that are invisible until you hit them, and the emergency arrangements have to answer a question — how do we get somebody out of a hole — that most documents never ask.
This walks the standard fifteen sections and says what each one needs when the work is excavation. Write them in this order and the document assembles itself; the reasoning behind that sequence is in how to complete a RAMS.
1. Project details
Site, client, principal contractor, your company, document reference, revision number, date. For excavation add two things most templates omit: the permit regime in force on this site (permit to dig, permit to break ground) and who the authorised person is. If the excavation is near a highway, note the traffic management authority and any permit reference.
2. Scope of works
Excavation scopes need dimensions. Length, width and depth, or a stated range; the number of trenches or pits; the method — machine, hand, vacuum; the ground type expected from the site investigation; whether the excavation will be open overnight; and the duration. "Excavate for foundations" is not a scope, because every control downstream depends on how deep and how long.
Say what is adjacent, too: the building line, the highway, another trade's work area, a boundary wall. Surcharge from things near the edge is a collapse mechanism, and it belongs in the scope because it is a fact about the location rather than a hazard you chose.
3. Personnel and competence
Name the supervisor. Name the competent person who will carry out the statutory inspections. State the operator qualification for the excavator — CPCS or NPORS with the relevant category — and the banksman or slinger qualification where lifting is involved. If the work is a confined space by definition, state who holds confined space entry training and who is the trained standby person.
Include the cable avoidance tool operator's training. Using a CAT and genny is a skill with a specific failure mode — swinging it in the wrong mode and concluding the ground is clear — and "operative trained in CAT use" with a date is the entry that matters.
4. Plant and equipment
List every item: the excavator by type and weight class, its quick hitch, the dumper, the pump, the breaker, the compactor, the CAT and signal generator, the gas monitor, the trench box or shoring system, the ladder. For each, the operator competence and the inspection regime — thorough examination under LOLER where it lifts, pre-use checks under PUWER for everything else.
This section is where a cross-check earns its keep. Every item of plant listed here has to appear in the hazard register with its own hazards — an excavator brings crush and struck-by, a breaker brings noise and hand-arm vibration, a pump brings fuel, noise and discharge. It is one of the checks an automated review runs as a matter of course: Valify compares the plant list against the hazard register and flags anything that appears in one and not the other, which is exactly the kind of omission that is invisible when the two sections are eleven pages apart.
5. Materials and COSHH
Purchased materials — pipe lubricant, concrete, bedding, sealants — with COSHH references. Then the ones the work creates or uncovers, which are the ones most often missing:
- Respirable crystalline silica from breaking out concrete or cutting kerbs and slabs.
- Diesel engine exhaust emissions, particularly where plant runs in a partially enclosed excavation.
- Contaminated ground identified by the site investigation — hydrocarbons, heavy metals, asbestos in made ground.
- Biological hazards where there is standing water, sewage or rodent activity: leptospirosis awareness, hygiene facilities and the wallet card.
- Wet concrete, which causes chemical burns through soaked trousers to kneeling workers.
Each needs a COSHH assessment reference and where the safety data sheet is held. COSHH assessment for construction covers the exposure limits and the control hierarchy for the generated ones.
6. Hazard identification
The register has to include, at minimum: buried services (electricity, gas, water, telecoms, fibre, drainage); overhead lines where plant will operate; collapse of the sides; falls of people and materials into the excavation; plant and pedestrian interface; access and egress; hazardous atmospheres and oxygen deficiency; water ingress and drowning; manual handling of trench sheets, props and pipes; noise and vibration; contaminated ground; damage to adjacent structures; and public interface where relevant.
Buried services are the entry to write first and the one to write specifically. "Buried services" as a single line is weaker than naming what the drawings show and what the survey found — an 11kV cable at 800mm is a different hazard from a foul drain.
7. Risk assessment
Score each hazard before controls, then again after. Score severity on the reasonable worst outcome: a partial collapse onto a kneeling worker and a strike on a live cable are both potentially fatal, and scoring them as moderate because it usually goes fine is the most common dishonesty in a risk assessment table.
The residual column must be complete. Where a residual score stays high — as it legitimately can for a service strike — say what makes it acceptable and who accepted it.
8. Control measures
The heart of an excavation RAMS, and the section that must be specific enough for a supervisor to check from the surface.
Buried services: drawings obtained and dated; CAT and genny survey by a trained operator with the results marked out; trial holes hand-dug or vacuum-excavated to confirm position and depth; a stated exclusion distance for hand-digging around known services; treating anything unidentified as live; and the stop-and-reassess rule when something unexpected appears. HSG47 is the reference and it is worth naming.
Collapse: state the method rather than the options. Battering to a stated angle derived from the ground conditions, or trench boxes, or a proprietary shoring system installed and removed in a stated sequence — with the depth at which it starts, which is not 1.2 metres by default, because people have died in shallower trenches. Where the excavation is near a structure or requires a designed solution, name the temporary works designer and coordinator.
Then: spoil and plant set back a stated distance from the edge; edge protection and covers; a secured ladder within a stated distance of any worker; segregation of plant and people with an exclusion zone around the slew radius and an agreed signalling method; atmospheric monitoring where required with the gases and alarm levels named; dewatering with the discharge route and consent; and the reinstatement sequence including the order support is removed.
9. PPE
Tied to the hazards rather than listed as a block. Hi-vis to the appropriate class for the traffic environment, gloves suited to the material, eye protection for breaking out, hearing protection with the noise level that triggers it, FFP3 with face-fit records where respirable dust is present, and buoyancy aids where there is a drowning risk. PPE is the last line here, not the control for collapse.
10. Emergency procedures
The section that separates a real excavation RAMS from a general one. It needs: the rescue plan for a collapse that does not send rescuers into an unsupported excavation; the means of raising the alarm from inside the excavation; casualty extraction arrangements; the response to a service strike, which differs by service — evacuate and do not touch for electricity, evacuate upwind and eliminate ignition sources for gas, notify the asset owner in both cases; the named first aider; and the nearest A&E by name and address.
Where the excavation meets the definition of a confined space, rescue arrangements must be in place before entry and must not rely solely on the fire and rescue service.
11. Environmental considerations
Groundwater protection — where dewatering discharges, under what consent, and what settlement or filtration is used before it reaches a watercourse or surface drain. Silt management, spill kits for plant refuelling, contaminated arisings segregated and disposed of under the correct waste codes with consignment notes, and noise and dust management for neighbours. On a contaminated site this section is not a formality; it is the difference between a discharge consent and an environmental prosecution.
12. Communication and briefing
Who briefs the RAMS, when, and how it is evidenced. For excavation add the daily start-of-shift briefing after the inspection, the signalling arrangements between operator and banksman, and the communication method for anyone working inside the excavation.
13. Legislation and inspection
Reference the regulations the work engages rather than a generic list: CDM 2015 regulation 22 for excavations, regulation 24 for inspection, PUWER and LOLER for the plant, the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 where they apply, and the Control of Noise and Vibration at Work Regulations.
State the inspection regime explicitly: a competent person inspects a supported excavation at the start of every shift before work begins, after any event likely to have affected its stability, and after any accidental fall of material — with a written report for the shift-start inspection. Name the competent person and say where the reports are kept.
14. Sign-off
Prepared by, reviewed by, approved by — with names and dates that precede the start of works — and an operative acknowledgement section. A signed, undated excavation RAMS cannot be tied to a revision, and revisions on excavation work are frequent because ground conditions change what you find.
15. Revision history
Every revision with its date and the reason for it. Excavation work generates revisions — a service found where the drawings said there was none, a change of support method after the investigation, a depth increase. Each one is a trigger for re-briefing, not just re-issuing.
Before you submit
Check three things in particular: that the support method is stated rather than offered as a choice; that the competent person for inspections is named; and that somebody reading the document could say how a person gets out of the excavation in a hurry. Those are the three a reviewer checks first, and they are the three most often left implicit. The complete excavation guide covers the underlying engineering in more depth, and which document types can be reviewed explains what to submit alongside the RAMS.
This article is general guidance on UK construction documentation practice. It is not legal advice, a compliance certification or a substitute for review by your own qualified health and safety personnel, who remain responsible for deciding whether any particular document is adequate. See our disclaimer.