BS 5975
Also called BS 5975-1:2024, BS 5975-2:2024
BS 5975 is the British Standard code of practice for temporary works, and since December 2024 it has been published in two parts: BS 5975-1:2024 on the management procedures for controlling temporary works, and BS 5975-2:2024 on the design and implementation of falsework. The single-document edition, BS 5975:2019, was withdrawn on 18 December 2024.
The UK position
The document is where most of the UK temporary works vocabulary comes from, and it is worth being exact about what can be said about it without a copy. BSI’s own description of BS 5975-1:2024 names temporary works designers, permanent works designers, temporary works coordinators, construction contractors, clients, suppliers and manufacturers as its audience, and describes the standard as giving recommendations and guidance on the procedural controls to be applied to all aspects of temporary works in the construction industry. The detail of those controls sits inside a document you have to buy, and this page does not reproduce it. What can be said without a copy is where the standard sits: it is a code of practice, not law. The legal duty is in CDM 2015, and BS 5975-1 is the code UK contractors most commonly work to in discharging it.
Cited by number and title:
- BS 5975-1:2024 — Temporary works: management procedures for the control of temporary works. Code of practice
- BS 5975-2:2024 — Temporary works: falsework, design and implementation. Code of practice
Where it matters on site
For anyone specifying crane mats the consequence is that a mat is a temporary works item and belongs in the same procedure as a prop or a falsework leg — briefed, designed, checked, registered and permitted before it is loaded. The second consequence is a citation one: a temporary works procedure still referencing BS 5975:2019 is referencing a withdrawn document, and so is every specification and method statement that inherited the reference from it. Our CPD-accredited seminar on specifying outrigger mats is written for health and safety professionals and temporary works engineers, and its subject is the gap this standard exists to close — that outrigger mats are frequently designed and used with no formal protocol behind them.