Burns & Co. H&S
Health & safety, led properly.
A fractional Head of Health & Safety, up to a full H&S team, for sub-contractors, main contractors and construction companies. Our specialists are NEBOSH and IOSH qualified.
What we provide
From a fractional head to a full team.
Fractional Head of Health & Safety
From £2,500 a month
Senior health & safety leadership without the six-figure salary: a competent person for your business, policy and management systems, audits and site inspections, incident response, and CDM support when you need it.
The full H&S team
Scoped to your sites
For main contractors and companies running multiple sites: several specialists on rotation, scheduled inspections, training and toolbox talks, RAMS production and a documented management system — a department, on demand.
And behind the leadership
Site audits & inspections
Scheduled and unannounced inspections across your sites, with written reports, findings scored by risk, and clear actions your site teams can pick up the same day.
Training & toolbox talks
Inductions, toolbox talks and training for site teams and managers — delivered on site or online, with records kept so you can evidence competence when a client asks.
Consulting & advice
Policies, procedures and management systems written for how your business actually works, plus day-to-day advice whenever a health & safety question lands.
CDM & documentation
Construction phase plans, F10 notifications, principal designer duties and the document packs tier one clients expect to see before you step on site.
Who we work for
Free and without obligation — a 30 minute call with a health & safety specialist about your sites. Fees are agreed in advance and scale with the cover you need.
Burns & Co. CRS — Construction RAMS Specialists
Need approved RAMS? Our CRS subdivision supplies tier one approved RAMS used across major plc housebuilder sites — including Vistry, Countryside Group and Taylor Wimpey, among others — from £499 a month, with compliance guaranteed or your money back.
Specialist services
Deep expertise, on call.
Beyond the standing fractional cover, our specialists take on defined pieces of work: the technical, high-risk areas where the regulations are specific and the consequences of getting them wrong are serious. Every item below can be bought as a one-off engagement or folded into your monthly cover.
Lifting operations
Specialist support from planning through to audit.
- Support when planning lifting operations
- Full bespoke lifting plans for cranes, excavators and telehandlers, with full compliance to LOLER 1998 and BS 7121
- Second opinions and reviews of contract lifts
- Lifting operations risk assessments
- Review of your lifting documentation — or provision of ours
- Lifting operation auditing on site
- Provision of CAD drawings for cranes
- Additional documentation for inspections and best practice, in line with LOLER and PUWER
Risk assessments
Full, comprehensive risk assessments across any category of works, produced on request.
- Full review of your current risk assessments
- Hazard identification, risk classification and mitigation
- Assistance on risk control implementation (advice)
- Ensuring compliance with all elements of HSWA 1974
Method statements
Comprehensive method statements produced in line with the regulations and HSWA 1974.
- Full review of current method statements, with access to industry specialists for further advice
- Assistance on method statement compliance implementation (advice)
Site compliance, permits & temporary works
Day-to-day assurance that what is on paper is happening on site.
- Site auditing to ensure compliance with RAMS and policies
- Revisions of risk assessments and method statements as site conditions evolve
- Temporary works designs review, implementation inspections, and consultations where temporary works overlap to ensure clarity
- Permit system monitoring for high-risk works — permit creation, and permit review where your documents require updates
- Full site safety inspections and documentation review to ensure full compliance
Document production & upskilling
Where a gap is identified, we close it — and teach your people to use what we produce.
- Document production where a need is identified: LOLER documentation, PUWER documentation, permit documentation and more
- Upskilling — we attend and train managers and supervisors on how to fully comply with regulations, policies and procedures, with face-to-face time to explain how to use each document to its maximum extent
Burns & Co. CRS — Subscription
Approved RAMS, £499 a month.
A suite of Risk Assessment Method Statements approved for use on tier one sites — housebuilders, main contractors and civils — kept current and ready for site. One fixed monthly fee, no per-document charges.
- Tier one approved — used on plc housebuilder sites nationwide
- Kept current as standards and contractor requirements change
- £499 a month, backed by the compliance guarantee
Three cranes, one approved standard
Why fractional
A full-time H&S manager costs the earth. Going without one can cost more.
An employed Head of Health & Safety costs a construction business anywhere from £60,000 to £90,000 a year once national insurance, pension, training and professional memberships are counted — a serious commitment for a company whose health & safety workload may not fill a whole week.
Going without one, however, costs more in the end. The Health and Safety Executive can inspect at any time, improvement notices stop work, and principal contractors increasingly refuse sites to sub-contractors who cannot evidence competent health & safety management. A serious incident — or a serious fine — can end a company that took twenty years to build.
Fractional cover resolves the trade-off. You pay a fixed monthly fee for qualified specialists who act as your competent person, run your systems, inspect your sites and answer the phone when something happens — the cover of an employed manager, at a fraction of the cost, scaling up to a full team as you grow.
The law expects competence
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require every business to appoint a competent person to help meet its health & safety duties. A named, qualified specialist who knows your sites satisfies that appointment properly — a folder of downloaded policies does not.
Built for how construction actually runs
Our specialists have worked on construction sites, not just written about them. They speak the language of your site managers, understand programme pressure, and know what a practical control looks like at seven in the morning on a wet site.
Tier one expectations, met
Principal contractors scrutinise their supply chain harder than ever: prequalification questionnaires, audited management systems, approved RAMS and evidence of competence. We put you in a position to pass those checks the first time, not the third.
Cover that scales with you
A two-man groundworks crew and a company running six live sites need very different levels of cover — but both need it to be credible. Start with the fractional service and scale to a full team as your sites multiply, with fees agreed in advance.
Case study 01
Regional groundworks contractor — 40+ operatives, South East
3
Months from failed audit to pass
£2m
Framework work retained
From failed audit to tier one approved
The situation
A groundworks contractor with more than forty operatives had failed a pre-qualification audit, and the failure landed badly: a place on a tier one housebuilder's framework, worth around £2 million a year, was under review. Policies had been pulled together from templates, inspection records were thin, and site managers were answering audit questions in their own words with nothing behind them.
What we put in place
We took the fractional Head of Health & Safety role for two days a month. The first month went to the paperwork: a health & safety policy and management system rewritten around how the business actually runs, a risk assessment library for its core activities, and a training and records trail that could stand up to scrutiny. From there we ran quarterly site inspections, delivered toolbox talks and prepared the site managers for the re-audit — including a full pre-submission review of their answers and evidence.
The outcome
The re-audit was passed first time and the framework place was retained. Three months after the failed audit the contractor's documents and records stood on their own, and our Head of H&S now joins their tender submissions whenever a tier one client asks to see the system behind them.
Case study 02
Scaffolding sub-contractor — six live sites, London & South East
6
Sites, one inspection rota
1
Accountable specialist
One specialist across six sites
The situation
A scaffolding contractor with crews moving between six live sites had grown faster than its health & safety cover. Each contract manager handled safety in their own way, RAMS were produced ad hoc, and there was no single view of what was happening on any site in any given week. Accreditation was coming up for renewal, and the directors knew the gap would show.
What we put in place
One of our specialists took the account: a monthly inspection schedule across all six sites, project-specific RAMS for every new contract, toolbox talks delivered in person on each site, and a near-miss reporting system the crews actually used. A weekly written summary went to the contracts director, so every site's condition, actions and outstanding items were visible in one place.
The outcome
Accreditation was renewed with a clean report and no conditions. Near-miss reporting went up sharply — which is exactly what you want, because crews only report when they trust the process. The contract managers got their time back, and the directors now have one accountable contact for the health & safety of the whole estate.
Case study 03
Regional developer — first multi-site programme
2 yrs
On programme, zero reportables
4
Sites covered in rotation
A department for a growing developer
The situation
A regional developer had grown from single plots to its first multi-site programme: three concurrent sites, tier one partner expectations, and CDM duties the existing team had never carried. There was one safety officer, stretched across three sites, with the company's first principal designer obligations on the horizon.
What we put in place
We supplied fractional team cover rather than one person: inspections across the sites on a rotation, CDM support including construction phase plans and F10 notifications, inductions and training delivered on site, and a management system reviewed each quarter as the programme grew. When a fourth site came online, the cover scaled with it — no recruitment, no notice period, no gap.
The outcome
Two years into the programme there have been no reportable incidents, CDM audits have been passed at every site, and the developer's own team now runs the day-to-day system we put in place. The company has since won its first framework position with a national housebuilder, with the H&S system cited in the submission.
The Burns & Co. Group advantage
Site expertise. Legal depth. One group.
Health and safety does not sit apart from the rest of your business. The decisions made on site affect your people, your contracts and your responsibilities as a director. Your advisers should understand how those pieces fit together.
Burns & Co. H&S is part of a group that brings together hands-on safety specialists, a legal practice and nationally respected general counsel. That means more than compliant paperwork: it gives you a direct route to legal and commercial support when a question goes beyond the safety brief.
Legal expertise within reach
A safety question can quickly become a legal one: who carries a contractual duty, what an employer must do, or how a regulatory concern should be handled. Through Burns & Co. Legal, you have a direct route to legal advice alongside your H&S specialists. Practical site controls can be considered with the legal responsibilities behind them, rather than treating the two as separate problems.
General counsel at your fingertips
Access to nationally respected general counsel brings a wider perspective to the decisions facing your directors. Burns & Co. GC connects legal duties, commercial commitments and business strategy, helping you weigh the implications of a new contract, a growing workforce or an expanding site portfolio. It is senior judgement within reach, without having to build an in-house legal department.
Connected advice, from site to boardroom
Your site team needs clear instructions; your leadership team needs to understand the risks and the decisions required. Being part of one group creates a route for H&S specialists and legal advisers to work together where needed, with your agreement. From reviewing responsibilities before work begins to addressing issues as a project evolves, you can bring the right expertise into the conversation without starting from scratch with an unrelated provider.
Explore Burns & Co. Legal and Burns & Co. GC, or discuss the support you need on your discovery call.
Legal and general counsel services are separately scoped, with any additional fees agreed in advance. Reserved legal services are provided through firms authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
How we work
From the first call to cover you can point to.
Book a discovery call
A free, half-hour conversation with a health & safety specialist. We ask about your trade, your sites, the contractors you work for and what currently covers you — and you get a straight view of where you stand.
Site survey & gap analysis
If we are a fit, we visit your sites and offices, walk the work you actually do, and review the documents you already hold. You receive a written gap analysis scored by risk: what is missing, what is weak, and what must come first.
The plan, put in place
We write or upgrade the policies, the management system and the RAMS route, plan the training calendar and set the inspection schedule. Everything is agreed in writing, with fees fixed before work begins.
Ongoing cover
From there your specialist is part of the business: scheduled and unannounced inspections, toolbox talks, day-to-day advice, incident support and a monthly report showing what changed and what is next.
Book a discovery call
Let’s talk about your sites.
Pick a time that suits you and tell us a little about your business. The appointment goes straight into the diary, and a health & safety specialist will come to the call ready to listen — to your trade, your sites and the contractors you work for.
- Free, and without any obligation
- A health & safety specialist, not a salesperson
- A straight answer on whether we can help