Pre-ticked for tilt-up and precast, falls, plant and temporary support, with three rows written. Concreting is the trade where the structure is at its weakest exactly when the most people are standing on it.
Falsework is a designed structure, not an arrangement of props
The props, their spacing, what they stand on and how the whole thing is braced are a design for that pour, checked before anything is loaded. A layout copied from the last slab is a design for the last slab.
The founding condition is the part that gets improvised. Props standing on a slab that has not reached strength, on soft ground, or on a packer somebody found are the reason falsework failures usually start at the bottom rather than in the middle.
The pour rate is part of the design
Concrete arriving faster than the falsework was designed to receive it is an overload, and it happens because the pour sequence is treated as a logistics question rather than a structural one. The design says how much can go where and in what order, and the sequence on the day has to follow it.
This is also why the permit to load exists as a written step. Somebody competent inspects the erected falsework and authorises the pour, and the pour does not start without it. It is a small piece of paper that stops a very large event.
Striking is decided by strength, not by Thursday
Early striking is the classic concreting failure and it is driven by programme rather than by ignorance. The engineer sets the striking time against tested strength, and back-propping goes in to the design before the main falsework comes out.
Cold weather is what catches people who have done it a hundred times. The same mix in the same formwork takes considerably longer to reach the same strength in July than it did in February, and the calendar does not know that. The cube results do.
Wet concrete burns and nobody expects it
It is strongly alkaline, and the burn develops over hours rather than immediately, so the person kneeling in it does not feel a warning. Cement burns regularly end in skin grafts, and almost always in somebody who has worked with concrete for years.
Waterproof boots that are actually waterproof, gloves, knee protection that keeps the material off the skin, and washing facilities that exist on site rather than back at the yard. It is an unglamorous control set and it prevents a genuinely serious injury.
The reason it gets skipped is that the burn is silent while it is happening. Somebody kneeling in a pour feels cold and wet rather than burnt, carries on because there is a slab to finish, and finds out that evening. Anybody who has been in wet concrete washes it off at the time rather than at the end, and that is the whole control in one sentence.
Starter bars are an impalement risk from the day they go in
Projecting reinforcement is easy to see when it is chest height and almost invisible when it is at ankle height in a slab you are walking backwards across while placing concrete.
Purpose-made caps rated for impalement are the control, not the plastic mushroom caps sold to stop people scratching themselves, which will not stop a fall. Bending the bar over is the other legitimate answer where the detail allows it. The exposure lasts from the day the steel is fixed until the next pour, which is often weeks, and the person who gets hurt is usually not the one who fixed it.
Common questions
Does concreting always need a SWMS?
Where tilt-up or precast elements are involved, yes, that is its own category. Otherwise it usually qualifies through falls over 2 metres from a suspended slab edge, powered mobile plant moving, or temporary support to prevent collapse. A ground slab poured from a chute with nothing moving nearby may sit outside the list.
Who signs off the falsework before a pour?
A competent person who inspects it against the design and issues a permit to load. That is deliberately a separate person and a separate step from whoever erected it, because checking your own work against a drawing you have been staring at all day is the least reliable inspection there is.
What is back-propping for?
It carries the load of the slab above while the main falsework is removed and while the concrete continues to gain strength. It is designed rather than improvised, and pulling the main props without it is how a slab that had cured perfectly well ends up on the floor below.
Is a concrete pump covered by the same statement?
The setup and the placing should be, because the outrigger loads, the ground bearing and the exclusion zone at the boom are part of your pour. What is not yours is the pump operator own maintenance and travel, which sits with whoever supplies it.
Can I use the same statement for a slab and a wall pour?
No, and treating them as one job is how falsework gets missed. A slab and a wall have different formwork, different pressure on it, different pour rates and different striking times, and the pressure on a wall form climbs with how fast you fill it in a way a slab never does. They also fail differently: a slab deck comes down, a wall form blows out sideways. Write the one you are doing. If the job has both, they are two activities on one statement rather than a single description that covers neither properly.