Take SSSTS if you supervise a team but do not run the site — it is a 2-day course for gangers, foremen and team leaders. Take SMSTS if you plan, manage or take responsibility for a site or a package of works — it is a 5-day course for site managers, project managers and agents. Both are CITB Site Safety Plus certificates valid for 5 years, refreshed with a shorter refresher course.
SSSTS in plain terms
SSSTS stands for Site Supervisors' Safety Training Scheme. It is aimed at people who have direct control of a small team on site: gangers, chargehands, foremen, team leaders and working supervisors who are still hands-on.
The course runs over two days and covers health and safety law as it applies to supervisors, risk assessment and method statements, toolbox talks, monitoring and inspections, and how to escalate a problem rather than absorb it. There is a short exam and an assessed exercise at the end.
Most main contractors treat SSSTS as the minimum ticket for anyone signing off a permit, running a gang or briefing a RAMS document to their team.
SMSTS in plain terms
SMSTS stands for Site Management Safety Training Scheme. It is the management-level course for site managers, project managers, contracts managers, agents and anyone who is accountable for how work is planned rather than only how it is carried out.
It runs over five days (often split into blocks or delivered over consecutive weeks) and goes much deeper: CDM 2015 duties, planning and organising work, occupational health, statutory inspections and records, working at height, excavations, temporary works awareness, and managing subcontractors.
If your name appears on the construction phase plan, or you are the person a client or principal contractor calls when something goes wrong, SMSTS is the expected level.
Side by side
- Audience — SSSTS: supervisors of a team. SMSTS: managers responsible for a site or package.
- Length — SSSTS: 2 days. SMSTS: 5 days.
- Depth — SSSTS: applying controls. SMSTS: planning, organising and monitoring them.
- Validity — both 5 years, then a refresher (SSSTS-R 1 day, SMSTS-R 2 days).
- Progression — SSSTS is not a prerequisite for SMSTS; you can go straight to SMSTS if the role calls for it.
How to choose in 30 seconds
Ask one question: do you decide how the work is planned, resourced and sequenced, or do you make sure a plan someone else wrote is followed safely on the ground? Planning it means SMSTS. Delivering it means SSSTS.
If you are somewhere in between — for example a working supervisor about to step up to site manager — SSSTS now and SMSTS when the role changes is the usual route, and it keeps you compliant in the meantime.
Don't let it lapse
Both certificates expire after five years. If you let one lapse, you cannot take the shorter refresher — you have to sit the full course again, which means five days off site instead of two for SMSTS holders.
Diary the expiry date the day you pass, and book the refresher three to four months out. Popular refresher dates fill quickly, especially around the end of the financial year.