What is a COSHH assessment?

A COSHH assessment evaluates the risks posed by hazardous substances in your workplace. COSHH stands for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, and completing one is a legal requirement for UK employers under the COSHH Regulations 2002, still the current legislation. The assessment identifies which harmful substances workers are exposed to, how serious that exposure is, and what you need to do about it.

Hazardous substances are broader than most people assume. They include manufactured products like solvents, adhesives, and cleaning chemicals, but also substances generated by the work itself:

• Fumes: welding smoke, soldering vapour, and exhaust from generators
• Dusts: wood dust, silica from cutting concrete, and insulation fibres
• Gases and vapours: refrigerants, paint spray, and carbon monoxide
• Biological agents: legionella in water systems and mould in building fabric

If a substance can harm someone through breathing, skin contact, or accidental swallowing, it falls within scope.

Why COSHH matters for field service teams

Field engineers work across multiple sites, often in different buildings with different substances each day, and frequently as lone workers. An engineer servicing an HVAC system in the morning and carrying out a drainage clean in the afternoon faces a different set of risks at each location. This makes COSHH harder to standardise than in a fixed workplace, and easier to overlook when teams are under pressure.

For businesses running planned preventive maintenance (PPM) contracts, this challenge is compounded across dozens of sites and assets. Each visit may involve different substances, different access conditions, and different exposure risks. Without the right documentation attached to each job from the outset, engineers arrive on site without the information they need.

A completed and current COSHH assessment is a critical part of workplace safety, protecting your engineers from preventable harm. It also protects your business from enforcement action by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) if something goes wrong on site, and gives a Contract Manager clean evidence to hand over the moment a client or auditor asks for it.

What should a COSHH risk assessment include?

A complete COSHH risk assessment follows five structured steps. Each step builds directly on the previous one, so gaps in the sequence create gaps in your compliance. The sections below walk through each stage in the order you should carry them out.

Step 1. Identify the hazardous substances

Start by listing every substance involved in the task, including those created by the work process itself. Check the safety data sheet (SDS), sometimes called a COSHH sheet or MSDS, which the manufacturer must supply with any chemical product. The SDS sets out the substance's hazards, safe handling instructions, storage conditions, and workplace exposure limits.

Process-generated substances are easy to miss because there is no label to prompt you. Dust from drilling, fumes from soldering, and vapour from spray paint all count, even when they come from no single product. You need to account for them in your assessment.

When identifying hazards, look for:

• Product labels and hazard pictograms: these signal the category of risk at a glance
• SDS hazard identification sections: these confirm health effects and exposure limits
• Process-generated substances: anything created by the task that is not a packaged product

Step 2. Evaluate who is at risk and how

Once you know which substances are present, assess who could be harmed. Consider every person on or near the site, not just the engineer carrying out the task. Exposure happens in three main ways:

• Inhalation: breathing in dust, fumes, or vapour
• Skin contact: direct handling or splashes from liquids and aerosols
• Ingestion: swallowing residue, most often through poor hygiene on site

Consider how long each person is exposed and how frequently the task takes place. Some workers face higher risk than others. New starters, pregnant workers, or anyone with a pre-existing respiratory condition may need additional controls even for tasks that appear routine. The goal is to judge the level of risk so that the controls you choose in the next step are proportionate to the actual hazard.

Step 3. Choose the right control measures

Control measures are the steps you take to reduce exposure to a safe level. The COSHH Regulations require you to apply the hierarchy of control, which sets a clear order of priority:

1. Eliminate the substance entirely if possible
2. Substitute it with a less harmful alternative
3. Enclose the process using local exhaust ventilation
4. Reduce exposure through safe work procedures and limiting time on the task
5. Protect individuals with personal protective equipment (PPE) as a last resort

PPE should never be your first or only control. It depends on engineers wearing it correctly every single time, which makes it the least reliable option. Training your team on the risks and putting written safe work procedures in place are both part of this stage and should be documented alongside your other controls.

Step 4. Record the significant findings

If you employ five or more people, recording the significant findings of your COSHH assessment is a legal requirement. A clear, written COSHH report, alongside your RAMS documentation, is your evidence of due diligence if a worker becomes ill or an inspector visits the site.

Your record should include:

• The substance and its associated hazards
• Who is at risk and the most likely route of exposure
• The control measures you have put in place
• The name of the person responsible for the assessment
• The date completed and the planned review date

Many teams still rely on paper forms or static PDF files when digital forms offer a more practical alternative. Static records are difficult to retrieve under pressure, especially when an engineer is on a site they visit infrequently. For ad-hoc jobs in particular, where a callout may take an engineer to an unfamiliar site with little preparation time, having COSHH documentation attached directly to the job record before scheduling means the right information reaches the right person before they arrive. Attaching records to the relevant job, site, or asset in your job management system removes the risk of engineers working without the documentation they need.

How often should a COSHH assessment be reviewed?

Completing the assessment is not the end of the process. The COSHH Regulations require you to review and update assessments regularly, and to revisit them immediately when circumstances change.

Any of the following should trigger a review:

• A new substance is introduced to your workflow
• The work process or method changes significantly
• An incident, near miss, or confirmed case of work-related ill health occurs
• An updated SDS changes what you know about a substance's hazards
• Health surveillance results suggest your existing controls are not working

Setting a minimum annual review cycle is the baseline for COSHH, with higher-risk environments needing to check more often. Review dates get pushed back when teams are busy with live jobs, and for an Operations Director covering multiple sites, that is usually the first place oversight drops off. Automated reminders, built into your job management system and linked to specific records, support ongoing compliance tracking and close that gap by removing the dependency on memory, keeping assessments current without extra admin effort.

How Joblogic helps teams manage COSHH assessments

For businesses managing work across multiple sites and contracts, keeping COSHH records current adds significant admin that paper-based processes struggle to keep pace with. Joblogic's compliance management gives your team a structured, auditable way to manage COSHH records as part of everyday job management.

Engineers can complete and submit COSHH documentation on site using the Joblogic mobile app, working from reusable templates built for your trades and job types, rather than starting from a blank form each time. Where the risk is high enough to warrant it, the job itself can be set to stop until the assessment is signed off, so work never starts ahead of the check.

For teams running PPM contracts, COSHH records link to your asset records and visit schedules. Automated reminders flag when a record's review date is due. For an FM Contract Manager overseeing multiple contracts, the reporting dashboards show which assessments are current, which are overdue, and where gaps exist across the whole operation.

If you want to see how Joblogic can support COSHH compliance alongside job scheduling, asset management, and reporting, book a demo and speak with one of our specialists who can walk you through the platform.

Frequently asked questions

What qualifications must you hold to carry out COSHH risk assessments?

There is no mandatory qualification set out in law. The person completing the assessment must be competent, meaning they have sufficient knowledge, training, and experience to identify hazards accurately and judge the level of risk involved.

What is the difference between a COSHH assessment and a general risk assessment?

A general risk assessment covers all workplace hazards, including physical and environmental risks. A COSHH assessment focuses only on substances hazardous to health, such as chemicals, dusts, fumes, and biological agents.

What happens if a COSHH assessment is out of date?

An outdated assessment may not reflect the actual risks on site, which means your control measures could be inadequate. The HSE may treat an expired assessment as evidence of non-compliance during an inspection, even if no incident has occurred. A Service Manager usually spots this as the first sign that a review schedule has slipped without anyone noticing.

Can COSHH records be stored as a PDF?

Yes, a COSHH risk assessment can be recorded and stored as a PDF. Static documents are harder to update and retrieve under pressure, so storing records within a job management system, attached to the relevant job or asset, is easier to manage as your operation grows.