At a glance

  • Sector. Industrial and specialist cleaning for manufacturing and agricultural clients
  • Client size. Owner-managed business with a small office team and mobile cleaning crews working on customer premises
  • Services used. Health and safety audit, policy rewrite, safe systems of work library, risk assessment and COSHH libraries, crew handbook and induction packs, fire safety training, ongoing advice
  • Engagement. Annual retained agreement from November 2025, with the audit and documentation delivered in January 2026
  • Headline result. All nine high-risk audit actions closed within a month of the audit, and a 20-document safe systems of work library issued to the crews

The client

The company provides contract cleaning to industrial sites, most of it inside working factories. Its crews clean production machinery at both the hot and cold ends of glass manufacturing lines, enter annealing lehrs to clean internal surfaces, handle waste streams and deep-clean agricultural buildings between stock cycles. Nearly all of the work happens on other people's premises, under other people's site rules, with the client's own employees exposed to the risk.

The challenge

The business had grown on a set of health and safety documents provided through its insurance broker. The documents were generic, several years old and written for a general contractor rather than a crew entering confined spaces in a glassworks. There was no fire risk assessment for the office and store, no evacuation procedure, no fire wardens and no extinguisher training. Emergency rescue arrangements for confined space entry had not been written down. The health and safety policy was unsigned. Site customers were increasingly asking for task-specific method statements the company could not produce quickly. The owner wanted a system that matched the work rather than one that satisfied a renewal form.

What D3 did

  • Carried out a full health and safety audit of the office, store and site operations in January 2026 and produced a prioritised action plan of 21 items, nine of them rated high
  • Rewrote the health and safety policy, responsibilities and arrangements for 2026 on the company's own template
  • Built a safe systems of work library of 20 documents covering every regular task and item of plant, from hot end and cold end machinery cleaning and lehr entry to poultry house washdowns, pressure washers, vacuum systems and generators
  • Produced the risk assessment and COSHH libraries behind those systems, with a dynamic risk assessment form for crews arriving at unfamiliar sites
  • Assembled an eight-section cleaners' folder and induction pack so every crew member carries the same risk assessments, method statements, toolbox talks, permits and forms
  • Wrote confined space rescue plans and a harness inspection regime, and arranged fire safety awareness, fire warden and extinguisher training for staff

The results

  • All nine high-risk actions from the January audit were closed by the end of the same month, including confined space rescue plans, the harness inspection regime and the fire training
  • Crews now work to 20 task-specific safe systems of work instead of a generic pack, and the company can hand a customer a method statement for any regular job on request
  • A single cleaners' folder and induction pack means new starters and existing staff are briefed to the same standard before they reach site
  • The policy, risk assessments and COSHH assessments are now on an annual review cycle with D3, with a legislation update each year so the system stays current rather than drifting back to a one-off pack

What this means for you

If your health and safety documents came free with your insurance, they were written for the insurer, not for your crews. D3 builds a system around the work you actually do, closes the urgent gaps fast and keeps it current year on year.