RAMS cost calculator

Where the cost of RAMS actually hides

Most trades never put a number on their RAMS paperwork because it doesn't arrive as an invoice. It comes out of evenings, weekends and the start of jobs that should already be moving. Add it up over a year and it's rarely small.

• Your writing time. An hour spent rewriting last job's method statement is an hour you could have billed, or an hour of your own evening. Either way it has a cost — that's what the hourly-rate field captures.
• Consultant fees. If you send some RAMS out, you pay per document — and consultants usually have a minimum fee, so a simple job costs much the same as a complex one.
• The rejected document. A RAMS sent back on Friday for “vague controls” can cost you a Monday start. The rewrite is the small part; the lost day for the crew, the chasing and the knock-on to the programme is the expensive part. That's why the send-back field asks for hours lost including delay and chasing, not just the editing time.

What UK consultant RAMS fees look like

There's no fixed price for a RAMS — fees vary a lot with the trade, the complexity of the work and the consultant. As a rough guide, a single document for a standard activity tends to land in the low-to- mid hundreds of pounds, with multi-trade or higher-risk work costing more, since those often run closer to a full day's work from briefing to delivery. Many consultants also apply a minimum charge, so the per-document cost of occasional one-off RAMS is usually higher than the headline day rate suggests. Use whatever your own consultant actually charges in the field above — that's the only number that reflects your situation.

How this calculator works

It only adds up figures you provide. Annual volume is your monthly RAMS count times twelve. The split between what you write and what a consultant writes is applied to your hours and their fee respectively, and the send-back cost is the share of submissions returned multiplied by the hours each one costs you at your hourly rate. There are no industry averages baked in and no assumptions about how any tool would change those numbers.

So what about RamsDocs?

RamsDocs is free during early access — £0 per RAMS, no card and no subscription. We're not going to invent a savings figure for you: the honest position is that the total above is what your current process costs, and a free tool costs nothing. If RamsDocs saves you even half the time you currently spend writing each RAMS, the difference is straightforward to work out from your own numbers. RamsDocs drafts a structured, site-specific document; you remain the competent person who reviews and signs it off.