There is no trustworthy published average for this, so the only figure worth having is your own. Time one method statement end to end, including the chasing and the waiting. Turning the working time into a yearly cost is quick.
How long does it take to write a method statement by hand?
Ask different firms and you will get different answers, because they are not writing the same document. A short method statement for a familiar job on a familiar site is not the same task as a site-specific RAMS for a client who wants their own form filled in. Any average that covers both is useless to you.
What is consistent is the shape of the work. The writing is a small part of it. The finding, copying, chasing and waiting are most of it, and those are the parts that scale badly as you take on more jobs.
Where the hours go
Watch someone produce one and the sequence is nearly always the same. They open the last similar one, which means first working out which one that was. They change the site address, the client, the dates and the names. They work out which hazards are different this time, which is the only part that genuinely needs their head. Then they chase the drawings, the data sheets and the plant certificates, send the whole thing for a signature, and wait.
Only one of those steps needs someone who knows the work. The rest is handling, and a system can take the finding and the retyping off your people.
The chasing deserves its own mention, because it rarely gets counted. The time spent writing is visible. The days spent waiting for a subcontractor’s certificate are on nobody’s timesheet, but the job cannot start without it.
What that costs a year
Take the minutes for one document, including the chasing, and divide by sixty. Multiply by how many you produce a month, then by twelve. Multiply that by the fully loaded hourly cost of whoever writes them. If you want the longer version of that sum across all of your documents, it is set out in how to work out what a paperwork problem costs your business a year.
Use the real cost of the person, not the salary divided by a round number of hours. If a supervisor writes them during the week, the honest cost is the site work they did not do instead. If they write them at the kitchen table on a Sunday, the cost is their weekend, and it does not show on any timesheet.
If your number comes out small, stop. Not every document is worth automating, and we will say so on the call.
Why the template does not save as much as you think
You probably have templates already. You still spend the hours, because a template solves the typing and nothing else.
A template does not know which drawing belongs to this job. It does not notice that the plant certificate expired last week. It does not chase the subcontractor. It does not stop a job that arrived without an address. A Word file cannot help with any of them.
Worse, templates quietly multiply. Two clients want the same information in a different order, so now there are two. A third asks for their own form, so there are three, and one of them has an out-of-date hazard list that nobody has opened in a long time.
What changes when a system drafts it
A build on this route drafts the document for a competent person to complete and sign. It reads the job record and fills your own template with what changes for this job: the client, the site, the dates, the people going. It inserts the drawings already on file. Anything the template needs that the record does not hold is flagged, not guessed. The draft goes to the person who signs it, with those gaps listed first.
What that removes is the finding and the retyping. The chasing and the waiting stay with you. What it leaves is a supervisor filling the gaps, checking the facts, and deciding whether the draft is right about the work.
The legal side does not change, and it should not. Under regulation 12 of CDM 2015, the principal contractor must draw up a construction phase plan before the site is set up, and must make sure it is “appropriately reviewed, updated and revised from time to time” for the length of the project. HSE’s own guidance says the plan should be proportionate to the size and scale of the job. A system can make the updating quicker. It does not do the reviewing for you.
What still has to be done by a person
The safe method of work. Every time.
A system can tell you that this job is like fourteen previous ones and draft accordingly. It cannot stand on the site, notice that the access is worse than the drawing suggests, and change the sequence. Nothing is fully automated where a mistake costs money or safety. On a method statement, that is not caution. It is the entire point of the document.
So the sign-off stays with a named person, and the system’s job is to make sure that person is reading something worth signing.
Working it out for your own team
Time the next one you produce. Start the clock when the job lands, not when the document opens, and stop it when the signature comes back. Write the working minutes down separately from the waiting, because only the working minutes go into the cost. Do that for a few jobs and you will have a range, which is more useful than an average.
Then bring the range to a 10-minute call. Tell me how many you produce a month and who writes them. I will tell you whether drafting them from your own templates is worth building, and give you a rough estimate for the first route.