Every site has people managing the work and people supervising it. CITB built two separate courses around that split, and if you have landed here wondering which one applies to you, Acadame can talk you through it in a few minutes.
SSSTS, the Site Supervisors Safety Training Scheme, is aimed at anyone with day-to-day responsibility for a team on site. Think foreperson or gang leader, stepping into their first spell of supervisory responsibility. It runs over two days. It covers the legal duties supervisors carry and how to spot hazards before they turn into incidents, while also addressing how to keep a team working within the rules without slowing the job down. Most people take it early in their career, often as the first formal step toward a management role.
SMSTS, the Site Management Safety Training Scheme, sits a level up. It is built for site managers, contracts managers and anyone accountable for planning and controlling the whole operation rather than one team within it. The course runs over five days because the scope is wider: legislation, risk assessment methodology, environmental management and the kind of decision making that affects an entire site rather than a single task. A site manager without SMSTS is missing a qualification most principal contractors treat as non-negotiable before handing over responsibility.
Job titles rarely tell you which one you need. A supervisor at one firm might carry the responsibilities SMSTS was written for, while a manager at a smaller company might only need SSSTS. The better question is not your title but what you are actually accountable for on site. Answerable for one team’s safety and output? SSSTS fits. Answerable for the site as a whole, including subcontractors and overall compliance? SMSTS is the correct course, and going in under-qualified tends to catch up with you at audit stage.
Acadame runs both CITB courses at our training, with both also available onsite for teams who would rather not release staff to travel. If you are still unsure which one matches your role, call the team on 03301 242 165 or email hello@acadame.co.uk and they will talk it through with you before you book.
