The retail-park method statement on a basement site

Suitable and sufficient is not a property of a document. It is a property of a document measured against this task, this site and these people. On that measure it fails.

It contains no risk assessment, only assertions. Against your site specifically, it is silent on:

• The lightwell: the working platform, edge protection, exclusion zone at the base, and rescue of an operative from a boom lift - including the harness and retrieval arrangements.
• The slope: boom lifts have a manufacturer's maximum ground slope; setup, wheel loading and stability on a cambered apron need to be considered, not left to a verbal check.
• The 11kV line: nothing on avoiding the line, safe clearances, goalposts, marker boards, or notifying the network operator. This is the largest single risk on the package.
• The ground itself: hardstanding over services or voids, and whether outriggers or wheels need spreader plates.
• People: no named operators, no verification of the correct machine category for a boom lift, no familiarisation records.
• Control: no briefing record, no supervision arrangements, no wind limit, no emergency plan, no interface with other trades working below.

A generic document transfers no control: it describes a different site with different hazards.

Three realistic options:

1. Let them start and manage it by supervision. Rejected. The hazards above are not supervision-fixable - you cannot supervise an operator into not striking a live line, and you will be the person standing in the witness box explaining why the load went over the lightwell.
2. Refuse the package outright and push it back to the commercial team. Defensible on safety but it tends to produce a stand-off, a lost week and a subcontractor who resents the process; it also gives you nothing to show as a constructive route forward.
3. Refuse the high-risk activity, but allow mobilisation against a defined restart condition. This is the one to take. It separates the safe work (deliveries, setting up the compound, preparing access) from the work that cannot proceed until the document is rewritten.

Set the restart condition precisely: a site-specific method statement and risk assessment, written by the subcontractor using your site information, reviewed and signed off jointly with you, with the overhead line and lightwell controls specified, operators and supervisor named, and the operatives briefed to it. Give a date and hold them to it.

The 'our H&S consultant approved it' argument is beside the point: the consultant was never given your site information, so they approved a document for a different site. Say that in writing, not just at the gate.

It is a competence and control failure, not a typo.

The method statement is built around that person: they are the one who checks the ground, positions the machine, sets the exclusion zone, authorises movement and stops the job. If they are not there, the control described in the document does not exist on site. The work would be running on an unwritten system.

Two things follow. First, require a named, competent replacement, with evidence of training for the role, briefed on the package, and named in the revised document. Second, resist the temptation to fill the gap yourself: you cannot be the lift/MEWP supervisor and run the site, and if you have not been briefed into their arrangements you are not competent to discharge that role on this package either.

Worth checking while you are there: who briefed the ten operatives, who checks the machines before use, and who is the appointed person for planning. If the subcontractor cannot answer those three on the spot, the mobilisation is not as ready as the start date suggests.