Scaffold erection risk assessment. A printable risk assessment for erecting, altering and striking a scaffold — the hazards of the job itself rather than of the finished structure.

This is an assessment of the job, not of the scaffold. The finished structure is dealt with by the design and the inspection regime; what this covers is the few days when people are working on a structure that is not finished and the protection is not all there yet — which is when scaffolders are hurt.

The hazard that dominates is falling during erection, and the controls for it are the subject of the industry's own guidance rather than of a generic form. The sheet asks what method is being used and what it depends on, so that an assessment naming a method nobody on the gang is trained in is visible as a gap rather than as a tick.

Falling materials runs it close, and it is the one with the public in it. A scaffold going up over a pavement is a different job from the same scaffold in a compound, and the sheet separates the protection of the gang from the protection of everybody else because they are different measures with different owners.

The strike is assessed on the same sheet as the erection on purpose. Striking is not erection in reverse — the structure is being progressively weakened rather than progressively completed, and the temptation to drop materials is at its highest. An assessment that covers only the build has covered the easier half.