A price, not a risk assessment
Every market has a document that says how a construction project will be run safely. What differs is what turns it on, and Australia is on its own here: the test is whether the construction work is valued at $250,000 or more. Nothing in it asks what the work involves.
Britain uses time and headcount. Under CDM 2015 a project is notifiable if it lasts longer than 30 working days with more than 20 workers on site simultaneously, or exceeds 500 person days. The United States has no federal equivalent at all.
So the consequences here run in both directions and neither matches instinct. A low-risk office fit-out at $300,000 is a construction project needing a principal contractor and a written plan. A demolition at $80,000, with asbestos in it and a live road beside it, is not.
That is not an argument that the threshold is set wrongly. It is a warning that "this is a serious job so the paperwork must apply" is the wrong way to work out whether the paperwork applies, and so is its opposite.
The duty defaults onto you
SafeWork NSW: you are the principal contractor unless you appoint another principal contractor with authority to have management or control of the workplace.
Read that again, because most people read a gap in the paperwork as a gap in the duty. On a project over the threshold with nobody appointed, the answer to "who is the principal contractor" is not "nobody yet". It is whoever commissioned the work, and every principal contractor duty is already running.
The appointment also has to be real. It only counts if the appointee has authority to manage or control the workplace, so naming a contractor who cannot direct the site moves nothing at all except a signature.
Four contents, and two of them are easy to fake
The plan must include the names, positions and specific responsibilities of those with health and safety responsibilities; the arrangements for consultation, cooperation and coordination of activities; the arrangements in place should a health and safety incident arise; and site-specific health and safety rules.
Two of those are usually present on paper and absent in substance. The first asks for names and positions, so a plan that puts "the site manager" against every line and never identifies a person has not met it. The last asks for site-specific rules, and a set of rules that would suit any site in the country is the precise thing it is not.
The consultation one repays a second reading too. Consultation, cooperation and coordination are three different verbs. Consultation is asking. Cooperation is not obstructing. Coordination is sequencing the work so that two trades do not create a hazard for each other, and it is the one that actually prevents incidents on a busy site.
Before work commences
Not before the first inspection and not before the first incident. A plan written in week three is late on the face of the regulation however good it is, and it is the easiest failure in the scheme to establish after the fact, because the dates are on the contract, the plan, the inductions and the delivery notes.
The duties that start when the plan is finished
Three of them, all carrying penalties. The plan has to be reviewed and kept up to date. Workers have to be made aware of its content before they start work. And workers have to be told of their right to inspect it.
That last one is a named right rather than a courtesy, and it is the one most often dropped, usually because the plan is treated as a document for the client and the regulator rather than for the people on site. The version in the site office in month six is the one anybody will look at.
The plan and the SWMS are one system
The management plan is where you set out how safe work method statements will be collected, assessed, monitored and reviewed, and the principal contractor has to obtain each SWMS before that high risk construction work starts. A plan that never mentions SWMS has left out the mechanism it exists to describe, and a stack of SWMS with no plan has no mechanism at all.
Needing a plan and having one are different questions
It works out whether you need a plan and whether yours has the four required contents. It does not write it, because the contents that matter are the site-specific ones and those are the parts nobody can generate from a form. The $250,000 figure and the four contents are the model WHS Regulations as adopted across the WHS jurisdictions, so check your own regulator if the job sits near the line. Victoria runs its own OHS Act rather than the model laws and does not use this scheme at all.
Common questions
When do I need a WHS management plan?
When the construction work is valued at $250,000 or more. At or above that figure the work is a construction project, a principal contractor must oversee it, and a written WHS management plan has to be prepared before work commences. Below it, no plan and no principal contractor are required, though nothing else about your duties changes.
Why is it a dollar figure and not a risk test?
It is a genuine oddity of the Australian scheme and it is worth knowing about, because it is the only one of the four markets that works this way. Britain uses time and headcount under CDM 2015: longer than 30 working days with more than 20 workers on site at once, or more than 500 person days. The United States has no federal equivalent at all. Australia asks only what the job is worth, so an office fit-out at $300,000 is a construction project and a demolition at $80,000 with asbestos and a live road beside it is not.
Nobody has been appointed principal contractor. Who is it?
You are. SafeWork NSW puts it plainly: you are the principal contractor unless you appoint another principal contractor with authority to have management or control of the workplace. The duty defaults onto the person commissioning the work rather than waiting to be handed over, so an empty box on the paperwork is not an empty duty. And the appointment only counts if the appointee can actually direct the site: naming a contractor with no authority to control the workplace moves nothing.
What must the WHS management plan contain?
Four things, and they are requirements rather than a suggested structure. The names, positions and specific responsibilities of those with health and safety responsibilities. The arrangements for consultation, cooperation and coordination of activities. The arrangements in place should a health and safety incident arise. And site-specific health and safety rules.
Which of the four contents do people get wrong?
The first and the last, and in the same way: both are usually present on paper and absent in substance. The first asks for names AND positions, so a plan that lists "the site manager" against every responsibility and never names a human has not met it. The last asks for site-specific rules, and a set that would suit any site anywhere is exactly what it is not. The consultation one is also worth reading twice, because consultation, cooperation and coordination are three different verbs and not three words for the same thing.
When does the plan have to exist?
Before work commences. Not before the first inspection, not before the first incident. A plan written in week three is late on the face of the regulation however good it turns out to be, and it is the easiest failure in the whole scheme to establish after the event, because the dates are on everything.
What are the duties after the plan is written?
Three, and penalties attach to them. The plan must be reviewed and kept up to date. Workers must be made aware of its content before they start work. And workers must be told of their right to inspect it, which is a named right rather than a courtesy and is the one most often dropped. The version sitting in the site office in month six is the one that gets looked at, not the one written in month one.
How does this relate to safe work method statements?
They are one system rather than two pieces of paper. The management plan is where you set out how safe work method statements will be collected, assessed, monitored and reviewed, and the principal contractor has to obtain each SWMS before that high risk construction work starts. A plan that never mentions SWMS has left out the mechanism it exists to describe.