Course overview
Cambridge has one of the busiest and most demanding construction pipelines in the East of England, and it needs site managers who can run a job safely from first fix to handover. The city’s growth is driven by a distinctive mix of work: laboratory and life-science schemes on the Biomedical Campus and the science parks, university and college estates projects with all the constraints of working in and around historic listed buildings, large-scale housing on the edges of the city at Cambourne, Northstowe and Waterbeach, and civil engineering across Cambridgeshire’s roads, drainage and utilities networks. Whoever is managing those sites carries real legal responsibility for the health and safety of everyone on them, and the CITB Site Management Safety Training Scheme (SMSTS) is the qualification that principal contractors, developers and public sector clients across the region expect that person to hold.
Our SMSTS course is built for the people who plan, organise and manage construction work in and around Cambridge: site managers, project managers, site supervisors stepping up into management, and business owners who oversee their own sites. It is a five-day CITB Site Safety Plus qualification delivered as a live, tutor-led class over a secure Zoom video link, so managers from across Cambridge and the wider county can earn a nationally recognised certificate without losing a working week to travel. The price is £430, and eligible employers registered with the CITB can claim a grant towards that cost.
The construction market in and around Cambridge is competitive, and a valid SMSTS certificate is increasingly a baseline requirement rather than a nice-to-have. Main contractors working on the city’s commercial, research and residential schemes routinely ask for it before they will let anyone take charge of a site. Getting the qualification done properly, with an experienced trainer who understands how the theory applies on a real Cambridgeshire job, is one of the most worthwhile investments a construction professional in the region can make.
Skills Training Group is a CITB-approved training organisation, and the SMSTS course is taught by trainers who have spent their careers in construction, site management and health and safety. That practical background matters. A site manager in Cambridge is not dealing with textbook scenarios but with congested city-centre sites, restricted access alongside pedestrians and cyclists, phased handovers on occupied university and hospital estates, and the pressure of keeping a programme moving without cutting corners on safety. A trainer who has stood on sites like these can explain not just what the regulations say but how a competent manager actually applies them when the job is under pressure.
Who the SMSTS course is for
The SMSTS course is aimed at anyone who has overall responsibility for managing health and safety on a construction site, or is about to take that on. Around Cambridge, that typically means:
- Site managers and site agents running commercial, residential or civil engineering projects
- Project managers coordinating work across one or more sites
- Experienced site supervisors moving up into a management role
- Construction business owners and directors who oversee their own sites
- Contracts managers and those responsible for planning and organising site activity
SMSTS is the management-level scheme. It is worth being clear about the distinction, because the two most common CITB Site Safety Plus courses are easily confused. SMSTS is the five-day course for the person who plans and manages the whole site. The two-day SSSTS (Site Supervisors’ Safety Training Scheme) is the shorter qualification for supervisors and first-line managers who direct a team or a work package rather than run the project. If you manage a site, or are about to, SMSTS is the course you need. You do not need a previous safety qualification to attend, though some experience on construction sites will help you get the most from the discussions.
The course also suits people who have been managing sites in the Cambridge area for years on the strength of experience but have never held the formal certificate, as well as those coming into site management from a related discipline such as quantity surveying or engineering. In both cases the SMSTS gives you the structured grounding in construction health and safety law that the role demands and the recognised certificate that clients and principal contractors now expect to see on file.
What you will learn
Over the five days, an experienced CITB-approved trainer works through everything a site manager needs to understand to run a job safely and stay on the right side of the law. This is a summary of the ground the course covers; the day-by-day module breakdown is set out separately on this page.
- The Health and Safety at Work Act and the supporting regulations that govern construction
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, or CDM, and the site manager’s duties under them
- Preparing, reviewing and monitoring risk assessments and method statements
- Managing high-risk activities such as work at height, excavations, groundworks and demolition
- Scaffolding, temporary works and electrical safety on site
- Confined spaces, emergency arrangements and fire management
- Occupational health, welfare and workforce wellbeing
- Behavioural safety and building a strong safety culture across a workforce
- The manager’s role in monitoring, inspection, reporting and record-keeping
The emphasis throughout is on applying the law and good practice to real situations rather than learning it in the abstract. Because the class is live and interactive, you can raise the specific challenges you meet on your own Cambridge sites and talk them through with the trainer and the other delegates, who typically come from a mix of construction backgrounds across the region.
By the end of the week you will be able to interpret and act on the CDM Regulations from the manager’s point of view, plan and coordinate site activity so that risk is designed out where possible and controlled where it cannot be, and challenge unsafe practice with the confidence that comes from knowing exactly where you stand legally. Just as importantly, you will understand the manager’s role in setting the tone for a whole workforce. On a Cambridge site with several subcontractors on the go at once, the safety culture is largely a reflection of what the site manager tolerates and what they insist on, and the course spends real time on how to lead that rather than simply police it.
How the course runs
The SMSTS course runs over five consecutive weekdays, Monday to Friday, from 8:30 to 17:00 each day. It is delivered as a live online class over a Zoom video link, taught in real time by a qualified CITB-approved trainer. This is a genuine classroom that happens to meet online, not a set of recorded videos you work through alone. You join the session each morning, take part in the group exercises and discussions, ask questions as they come up, and get answers there and then.
Running the full week together, midweek and back to back, means the material builds logically from one day to the next and you finish the course qualified and ready to apply it. For managers working on live Cambridge sites, the live online format is a practical fit: you can join from a site office, from your workplace or from home anywhere in Cambridgeshire, and there is no week spent commuting to a distant training centre on top of the course itself. The class stays interactive from start to finish, with case studies and group work that keep five full days engaging rather than a passive lecture.
Getting set up is simple. Once you have booked, you are sent joining instructions and a link ahead of the start date. On the morning of day one you click the link, check your camera and microphone are working, and you are in the classroom. There is nothing to install beyond the standard Zoom software, and if you have any trouble connecting, our support team is on hand before the course begins to sort it out so that you start on time. Delegates are asked to keep their camera on and take an active part, because the group discussion is a big part of what makes the five days work, and it is also part of how CITB courses are expected to run.
Assessment and exam
To pass the SMSTS course you need to attend all five days, take part in the exercises and discussions, and pass the end-of-course examination. The exam is made up of multiple-choice, multi-response and short written-answer questions, and lasts approximately 30 minutes. The pass mark is 81%. The questions are designed to check that you have understood the manager’s responsibilities for health and safety law and for controlling risk on site.
Your trainer prepares you for the assessment as the week goes on, so the exam reflects what you have covered and discussed together rather than being a separate hurdle to revise for on your own. Skills Training Group delegates achieve a 98.7% SMSTS pass rate, which is a good indication of how well the teaching sets people up for it. If you would like to gauge your readiness beforehand, there is a free SMSTS practice test you can take as many times as you like.
Why train online from Cambridge
There is no physical training centre for this course, and for most Cambridge managers that is an advantage rather than a compromise. Delivering the SMSTS live online means no travelling to and from a venue across five days, no parking to sort out in a city where parking is never straightforward, and no accommodation costs if the nearest classroom date would otherwise have been miles away. You reclaim the time that would have gone on the commute and spend it on the training or back on your site.
The key point is that the qualification is exactly the same. The certificate you earn over the live online class is the identical nationally recognised CITB SMSTS certificate you would receive in a physical room, taught to the same national standard by the same calibre of CITB-approved trainer. Managers based in Cambridge city centre, Ely, Huntingdon, St Neots, Newmarket, St Ives and the villages across Cambridgeshire all join the same virtual classroom. The only thing that changes is that nobody spends the week driving to it. For an employer training more than one manager, the saving in travel and lost site time makes the live online route the sensible choice.
There is a practical benefit to running the course while you are still close to your site, too. Because you are joining from Cambridge rather than being sent away for the week, the learning stays connected to the job in front of you. Points raised in the classroom about CDM duties, risk assessments or managing subcontractors can be turned over against your own live project during the same week, which tends to make the training stick far better than a course completed in isolation somewhere else. Managers regularly tell us that the most useful part of the week is talking a real situation from their own Cambridgeshire site through with a trainer who has managed similar work.
Your certificate and its five-year validity
When you complete the five days and pass the exam, you are awarded the official CITB SMSTS certificate. It is recognised right across the UK construction industry as evidence that the holder is competent to manage health and safety on site, which is why it is so widely asked for on Cambridge projects and beyond. The certificate is valid for five years.
Before it expires, you keep the qualification current by completing the SMSTS refresher course, which updates you on any changes to legislation and best practice and extends your certificate for a further five years. It is worth putting a note in the diary well ahead of the expiry date, because an SMSTS certificate that has been allowed to lapse means sitting the full five-day course again rather than the shorter refresher. Employers with several managers in Cambridge often stagger renewals so that certificates do not all expire at once, which keeps the team continuously qualified without pulling everyone off site in the same window.
CITB grant funding
The SMSTS course is grant-eligible, so employers registered with and paying the CITB Levy may be able to claim a CITB grant towards the cost of the training. For Cambridgeshire construction firms putting several managers through the course, that support can make a real difference to the overall budget for upskilling a team.
The grant is paid by the CITB directly to the employer following successful completion of the course, and is subject to CITB approval. If you are not sure whether your business qualifies or how to go about claiming, our team can talk you through the eligibility criteria and the process before you book. For a Cambridge contractor developing a group of managers over a year, factoring the grant in from the start can bring the effective cost of a proper training programme down noticeably, and it is worth checking your position rather than assuming you do not qualify.
How to book your SMSTS course in Cambridge
Booking is straightforward. You can reserve a place on the next available live online SMSTS course online at booking.skillstg.co.uk/course/SMSTS, where you can see the upcoming dates and secure your spot in a few minutes. If you would rather talk it through first, or you are arranging training for several managers from the same Cambridge business, call our team on 0808 164 2780 and we will help you find the right dates and sort out any CITB grant questions. You can also read more about the course on our main SMSTS course page.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a training venue in Cambridge, or is the course online?
The SMSTS course is delivered live online over a Zoom video link, so there is no physical venue to travel to. You take part from a site office, your workplace or home anywhere in Cambridge or Cambridgeshire. It is a real, tutor-led classroom held online, not a recorded course, and you earn exactly the same nationally recognised CITB certificate you would in a physical room.
How long is the SMSTS course and when does it run?
It runs over five consecutive weekdays, Monday to Friday, from 8:30 to 17:00 each day. Running the full week back to back means the material builds logically from one day to the next, and you finish qualified and ready to apply it on your Cambridge site.
How much does the SMSTS course cost in Cambridge?
The course is £430. Employers registered with the CITB Levy may be able to claim a CITB grant towards that cost, subject to CITB approval, which our team can help you arrange. The price includes your course materials and the end-of-course assessment.
What does the exam involve and what is the pass mark?
The examination is made up of multiple-choice, multi-response and short written-answer questions and lasts approximately 30 minutes. The pass mark is 81%. Your trainer prepares you for it as the week progresses, and you can try our free SMSTS mock test beforehand to check how ready you are.
What is the difference between SMSTS and SSSTS?
SMSTS is the five-day scheme for site managers, project managers and agents who plan and organise whole construction projects. SSSTS is the two-day scheme for supervisors and first-line managers who direct a team or a work package. If you run a site rather than supervise a gang within it, SMSTS is the course you need.
Do I need any experience or a previous qualification to attend?
No previous safety qualification is required to take the SMSTS course. Some experience on construction sites is helpful, as it makes the discussions more relevant, but it is not mandatory. You do need a good standard of spoken and written English, along with a reliable internet connection and a suitable device with a webcam and microphone, since the course and exam are delivered in English.
What happens when my SMSTS certificate expires?
The certificate is valid for five years. Before it expires you renew it by completing the SMSTS refresher course, which brings you up to date with current legislation and best practice and extends your certificate for a further five years. If you let it lapse, you would have to sit the full five-day course again, so it is worth renewing in good time.
Give yourself or your team the management qualification that Cambridge contractors ask for, along with the practical knowledge to run a site safely. Book your place on our next live online SMSTS course at booking.skillstg.co.uk/course/SMSTS, or call our team on 0808 164 2780 to check dates, discuss training several managers from your Cambridge or Cambridgeshire business, or ask about claiming a CITB grant. Whichever way you get in touch, we will help you get booked onto a course that works around your site commitments.
Modules breakdown
Across the five days, your tutor works through the full CITB Site Management Safety Training Scheme syllabus, blending live teaching with group discussions, case studies and daily knowledge checks. Every module is taught with the site manager’s responsibilities in mind, covering the following key areas:
Health and safety legislation
- Health and Safety at Work Act fundamentals and their implications for construction
- Environmental legislation affecting construction sites
- Recent developments and new guidance in safety regulations
- Responsibilities under relevant legislation, and industry best practice beyond the legal minimum
Risk management
- Conducting thorough risk assessments and implementing the necessary control measures
- Ensuring safe working practices across different site activities
- Managing common safety issues on construction sites
- Creating systems for continual safety awareness
Leadership and communication
- Developing a positive safety culture on site
- Techniques for communicating safety protocols effectively
- Engaging the workforce in health and safety initiatives
- Managing subcontractors and supporting site supervisors in their safety responsibilities
Practical site management
- Day-to-day safety management techniques
- Responding to incidents and near misses
- Documentation and record-keeping requirements
- Site inspections, audits, toolbox talks and safety briefings
Special site hazards
- Working at height safety protocols
- Plant and equipment safety
- Excavation and groundworks safety
- Managing hazardous substances
- Electrical safety on construction sites
You attend all five training days, take part in the group activities and knowledge checks, then sit the final exam. On passing, you receive the official CITB SMSTS certificate, valid for five years, which you keep current with the two-day SMSTS Refresher Course before it expires. If you supervise rather than manage a site, the two-day SSSTS course may be the better fit – our team can help you choose.
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