It cannot check anything against the real site
Valify reads the document and nothing else. If a method statement says the ground is stable, the access route is clear, or a particular piece of plant is on site, it has no way to know whether any of that is true. It can tell you the document contradicts itself — plant named in one section and missing from the hazard register in another — but it cannot tell you the document contradicts reality.
A document can be internally perfect and still describe a job that cannot safely be done the way it is written. That gap is a site visit, not a scan.
It does not know your project
Client-specific requirements, framework agreements, a principal contractor’s own standards, conditions attached to a particular permit — none of that is visible to Valify unless it is written in the document being reviewed. It reviews against what a thorough reviewer would generally expect of a RAMS, not against your contract.
It can be wrong in both directions
It flags things that turn out to be fine, and it misses things a person would catch. Both happen. The severity ranking is a judgement about how much attention something deserves, not a measurement — a Critical flag is Valify saying “look at this first”, not “this is definitely wrong”.
Every finding carries its reasoning so you can disagree with it. A tool you cannot overrule is worse than no tool.
It cannot read what is not text
A scanned photograph of a printed document with no text layer, a drawing, a site plan, a photograph of a whiteboard — Valify cannot read any of these. It will tell you it cannot rather than reviewing an empty document and reporting no issues.
Diagrams, tables of dimensions and annotated plans embedded inside an otherwise readable document are also not interpreted. The words around them are.
It is not a competent person, and it does not sign anything
Valify is a document review assistant. It has no professional qualification, holds no liability, and its output is not an approval. Under CDM 2015 and the wider framework, the duty to ensure a risk assessment and method statement are suitable and sufficient sits with your organisation and the competent people in it. That does not move, and Valify is not designed to make it move.
When you accept a document in Valify, the record says that you decided — who, when, and what the report said at that moment. It is a record of your decision, not evidence that the document is compliant.
It is not a legal opinion
Valify’s checks reflect common expectations of a well-written RAMS and the hierarchy-of-control principles underneath UK health and safety practice. They are not a statement of what the law requires in your specific circumstances, and a clean report is not a defence. If you need to know whether something meets a legal duty, ask somebody qualified to tell you.