Sector
Deep excavations, buried services, temporary works, live traffic and heavy lifting — civils carries some of the highest-consequence risks in any sector. Safepippin gives you a Chartered competent person who knows groundworks and infrastructure inside out, with practical systems that keep your sites legal, your accreditations current and your crews going home safe.
The H&S landscape
Civil engineering concentrates the heaviest hazards in construction into one job — and the regulators know it. Under CDM 2015 and the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the duty to plan, manage and monitor these risks sits squarely with you. Here are the ones that keep us, and the HSE, awake at night.
Unsupported or poorly supported trenches still kill workers in the UK. Battering, shoring, trench boxes and a competent inspection regime under CDM 2015 — supported by a sound understanding of the ground — are non-negotiable when people enter an excavation.
Striking a live cable, gas main or water pipe is one of the sector's most common serious incidents. HSG47 (avoiding danger from underground services) and a robust permit-to-dig — plans, CAT & Genny, safe digging — are how you stay off the front page.
Falsework, formwork, trench support, propping and cofferdams fail when nobody owns the design. BS 5975 expects a Temporary Works Coordinator, a designer and a permit-to-load — clear roles, checks and sign-off before anything is built off or struck.
Operatives working alongside live traffic, plant and the public demand disciplined controls. The New Roads & Street Works Act 1991, Chapter 8 and Safety at Street Works guidance govern signing, lighting, guarding and accredited operatives on the highway.
Manholes, chambers, shafts, tanks and culverts can hold oxygen-deficient or toxic atmospheres. The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 require a safe system of work, gas monitoring, RPE and a rehearsed emergency rescue plan — never improvised on the day.
Cranes, excavators lifting, telehandlers and chains all fall under LOLER 1998 and PUWER 1998. Thorough examination, a lift plan, an Appointed Person and a competent slinger-signaller keep heavy loads under control on a congested site.
How Safepippin helps
You don't need a consultant who emails a generic template and disappears. You need someone who understands a permit-to-dig, knows what a TWC actually does, and can stand behind your method statement if a client or the HSE asks the hard question.
Safepippin builds and reviews the controls that civils lives and dies by — permit-to-dig and services-avoidance procedures aligned to HSG47, temporary-works coordination support under BS 5975, and site-specific RAMS (risk assessments and method statements) that reflect the real sequence of work rather than a folder nobody opens. We assess your ground risks, your lifting plans and your traffic management so the paperwork matches what's actually happening on site.
Where you run an ISO 45001 occupational health & safety management system, we maintain it — internal audits, document control, corrective actions and your monthly site inspection programme — so accreditation bodies, principal contractors and insurers see a system that genuinely works. Your advice comes from Dominic Gibbons CMIOSH, a Chartered Member of IOSH, not a call-centre script.
What's included
Practical, proportionate and mapped to the legislation that applies to groundworks and infrastructure. Pick the pieces you need, or let us run the lot as your outsourced safety department.
Procedures and permits built around HSG47 — services drawings, CAT & Genny surveys, trial holes and safe-digging rules — so nobody puts a bucket through a live main.
Help establishing TWC and TWS roles, design briefs, registers and permit-to-load and permit-to-strike controls in line with BS 5975 — clear ownership from design to removal.
Risk assessments and method statements written for the real task and sequence — excavations, lifting, confined-space entry, traffic management — under MHSWR 1999, PUWER 1998 and COSHH 2002.
We keep your occupational H&S management system live and audit-ready — document control, internal audits, management review and corrective actions that stand up to scrutiny.
Structured, recorded inspections of excavations, plant, access, lifting and welfare — the proactive monitoring CDM 2015 expects, with clear, prioritised actions you can act on.
When a near miss or incident happens, we run a proper root-cause investigation and handle RIDDOR 2013 reporting — so lessons are captured and it doesn't happen twice.
How it works
Bringing Safepippin in is straightforward. We do the heavy lifting on compliance so your team can get on with building.
We walk your sites, learn your ground conditions, plant, sequences and the contracts you're chasing — then review the RAMS, permits and ISO system you already have in place.
You receive a prioritised action plan mapped to CDM 2015, HSG47, BS 5975, LOLER and the standards that apply to your work — and we're formally named as your competent person under Reg 7 of MHSWR 1999.
Permit systems, RAMS and inspections go in and become routine, your ISO 45001 system stays audit-ready, and a Chartered professional is on call whenever the ground throws up a surprise.
On civils, the difference between a near miss and a fatality is usually a control that was written down but never owned. Our job is to make the permit, the lift plan and the trench inspection part of how the site actually runs — not paperwork in a folder.Dominic Gibbons CMIOSH · Safepippin Compliance
Works hand in hand
Civils clients usually lean on these alongside their sector support — all from the same Chartered source, all joined up.
A Chartered safety professional formally appointed under Reg 7 of MHSWR 1999 — your named adviser for clients, insurers and principal contractors.
Get accreditation-ready for Constructionline, SafeContractor, CHAS and Achilles — the gateways to winning civils and infrastructure work.
Qualitative face fit testing of RPE for dust, silica and confined-space work — making sure tight-fitting masks actually seal on the people wearing them.
Building something serious?
Tell us about your work — the ground, the lifts, the temporary works, the contracts you're chasing — and we'll show you exactly how we'd support you. No obligation, no jargon.
