Searching for a method statement example almost always means one of two things: you have been asked for one at short notice, or you have written one and want to know whether it is any good. Both are reasonable, and both are badly served by downloading a document and editing the names. This page is about what an example is genuinely useful for, which is its skeleton and its sequencing discipline, and about the parts you cannot borrow because they are the only parts specific to your job.
What is safe to take from an example
The skeleton: scope and exclusions, site and access, personnel and competence, plant and materials, the numbered sequence, the preconditions for each stage, emergency arrangements, the stop trigger, and the sign-off block. Also the discipline of writing the sequence as instructions rather than as description. That structure is a genuine transfer of knowledge and there is no reason to reinvent it.
What you cannot take, and why it is obvious to the reader
Everything that makes the example about its own job: the access route, the isolation points, the interfaces with other trades, the hours, the exclusion distances, the named roles. A reviewer who reads packs weekly recognises borrowed text immediately, usually because the site details are absent or, worse, still belong to somebody else's site. Being asked to resubmit is the good outcome of that.
The sequencing test that separates a real statement from a borrowed one
Read your sequence and ask, at each stage, what would happen if the stage before it had not been completed. A real statement has an answer, because the preconditions were written by someone imagining the job. A borrowed one collapses immediately, because its stages were written for a different sequence and the preconditions do not chain. This takes ten minutes and catches most of what reviewers reject.
Do the arithmetic on how many you will need
Firms underestimate method statements the same way they underestimate assessments, by pricing the first one and forgetting the reissues. Every significant change to the job means a revision and a rebriefing. The free risk assessment form worksheet on this site counts assessments forced out of cycle by change and the people each change has to reach, which is the same traffic your method statements will generate.
Questions people ask about method statement example
Where can I find a method statement example?
Trade bodies and principal contractors often publish specimen structures, and many clients will tell you what they expect to see. Use them for the skeleton. The one place not to look is a generic template site that sells a document with your trade in the title and nothing about your job in the body.
Can I reuse my own method statement from a previous job?
Yes, and that is the sensible way to work, provided you rewrite everything site-specific rather than editing the address. Keeping your statements as records rather than as files makes this fast, because the last version and what changed in it are both visible.
How detailed does the sequence need to be?
Detailed enough that a competent person new to the site could follow it without asking you a question about safety. That is a higher bar than most first drafts meet and a lower one than a fifty-page document; the length follows from the test rather than from a house style.