Structure of Report Executive Summary Summary of whole report including what was done, why, what was found and what main recommendations. Remember your audience is managers and possibly the regulator. What are they interested in most? What language should you use? Introduction Introduce the work, the intent, the importance Scope & Approach Introduce the purpose of the work and how you would have done this as a safety consultant/officer. What areas of health and safety practice were included in your review? Just hazard review or legal evaluation or management system audit? Give an overview of the scope of what was included. Results & Recommendations • Consider how you will structure this section of your report. By safety issue, by management issue, by responsibilities? • What subsections do you want to include? Governing legislation? Management system approach? Safety issues identified? Recommendations? • Highlight the issues and link to appendices where you can provide more technical, detailed information relating to the issues. This will help you with word count. • Remember I will not read appendices unless you refer to them in the main report i.e ‘see Appendix B’ or ‘Please refer to Appendix A for more information’ etc Conclusions • This is a restatement of the main issues of importance and recap of what needs to be done to pull areas of importance together. Appendices • You can prepare appendices relevant to information within the main body of your report. • Typical appendices may include pictures to give context to safety issues; an organizational chart of people; the detailed action plan of recommendations; detailed sections of relevant legislation or guidance; policies developed; technical details relating to safety issues or recommendations etc Note on Action Plan The action plan serves two purposes in this assessment. 1. It allows a detailed focus on the risks and issues that you have identified within the case study and what you must recommend in line with best practice/law/codes of practice how best these risks must be prevented (risk focus). 2. Secondly, it allows a focus on health and safety management more generally so that an approach can be recommended for preventing injury or illness through active leadership and management using the management system approach. • The action plan should not be generic. It should highlight the issue in SMART language e.g. ‘Write work at height policy to include a hierarchy of preferences for collective scaffolding over individual use of ladders in line with work at height regulations’ instead of ‘write a policy to prevent falls from height’. Think of it like this – if someone read your recommendations would they know exactly what to do and why by just reading it or would they have to come back to you to ask you for more details? • The action plan should be structured to identify issues, recommendations, persons responsible, priority basis for completion, and timeline for completion. • Consider how you will define your priority basis for completing actions. By cost? By risk level numerically or traffic light system? You must justify this in your approach. Structuring Main Findings Section of Report By law (also called a Compliance report) If the standards used are defined by law then this can also be called a Standards Report. By management structure (who) By responsible person By place (spatial) By time (accident investigation time line reports) By risk (or hazard) By aspect (e.g. control, communication, competence or consultation) By accident theory (report on both latent and active failures) By management process (POPMAR/PDCA) – by what element of the cycle is missing