The folder of safety data sheets people hand me is not a COSHH assessment, and an inspector will say so on the day. What comes back from this is the assessment itself - what your people actually do with the substance, and what stands between them and it.
Further guidance on hazardous substances:
The COSHH Toolkit has the templates and a set of worked example assessments for common substances, and Document Preparation will put your company name and logo on the set.
COSHH Assessment Preparation
COSHH is the assessment people most often have in the wrong form. A folder of manufacturer safety data sheets is not a COSHH assessment, and an inspector will say so. The data sheet tells you what is in the product. The assessment tells you what happens when your people use it, in your workplace, in the quantities you use, and what you have done about that.
This service closes that gap. Send us the safety data sheets and tell us how the substances are used, and we return proper assessments. If you already have COSHH assessments in a mix of formats, we rework those instead.
What You Get
Whether we are building from data sheets or reworking what you have:
- A completed assessment per substance - in the alphaZ F-HS5 COSHH Assessment format, branded to your company
- Hazard classification carried across correctly - the hazard statements, signal word and pictograms taken from the manufacturer's data sheet rather than guessed at
- Exposure routes and the people affected - written against how the substance is actually used in your business, not in the abstract
- Controls set out against the hierarchy of control - elimination and substitution considered before landing on PPE, which is the order an inspector expects to see
- First aid, spillage, storage and disposal - the sections that get skipped, completed from the data sheet
- A populated COSHH register - your F-HS4 COSHH Register listing the assessments so the set is navigable
- Substances flagged for review - anything where the data sheet points to health surveillance, a workplace exposure limit or a substitution worth considering comes back marked
How Much One Day Covers
Your substance list. We do not cap it at a number of assessments, because the count is rarely what decides the time - how usable the data sheets are decides it. A list of common cleaning and workshop products moves quickly. Specialist chemicals with long data sheets and exposure limits take longer. The more context and information you give us, the better what we prepare will be. We work through as much as the time allows, in the order that matters most to you.
How the Work Gets Done
We use our own AI tooling to do the mechanical part of document preparation, and a consultant checks the output before it reaches you. COSHH is a good example of why that matters. A safety data sheet runs to sixteen sections and most of what an assessment needs is in there somewhere, buried among a great deal that is not relevant to you. Pulling that out accurately, twenty times over, is careful transcription rather than judgement.
The judgement is what your people actually do with the substance, and that comes from you and from a consultant reading the result. Nothing is signed off on the tooling's word alone.
The templates are ours, developed over 25 years of real audits, and they are not AI generated. Classification comes from the manufacturer's data sheet, not from a model's recollection of a chemical, because getting a hazard classification wrong on a COSHH assessment is not a formatting error. Where a data sheet is missing, out of date or contradicts itself, we tell you rather than filling the gap.
Why a Day Goes This Far
Anyone can rent the same AI we use. What they cannot rent is what we point it at.
Behind this service is a document library built over 25 years - manuals, procedures, policies, registers, risk assessments, COSHH assessments, audit checklists and forms, covering every standard we work to and most situations a management system runs into. Each one has been through real audits, and corrected where an assessor pushed back. That is the part that took 25 years, and it is the part that cannot be generated.
Our tooling applies that library to your business. A general purpose AI, pointed at the same job, has nothing to apply, so it writes something that reads well and describes a company that does not exist.
What We Need From You
- The safety data sheets, or the product names and manufacturers so we can tell you which ones to request
- How each substance is used - the task, roughly how much, how often, and indoors or out
- What controls you already have, including any ventilation and the PPE you issue
- Your existing COSHH assessments, if you have them
- Your company name and logo
Data sheets are free from the manufacturer and most are on their website. If you are not sure which products need an assessment, send us your substance list and we will tell you.
Other Things Remote Support Covers
A support day does not have to be spent on COSHH. The same day can be pointed at any one of these instead, and it is the same purchase either way:
A day can also go on things that are not document preparation at all - training, internal audits, a gap analysis, or simply working through a problem on a call. Remote Support - Project is the same day bought without a job attached to it.
Every one of these services is listed on the ISO consultancy support page, along with how a support day works and what is covered by a subscription.