SSSTS Training in Swansea – £199 Live Online

Course overview

Course overview

There is a specific moment in most site careers when the job changes shape. One week you are getting on with your trade and answering to the supervisor; the next you are the supervisor, and the gang, the paperwork and the safety of a section of the works all sit with you. In Swansea that step happens on everything from waterfront and city-centre regeneration to housing plots, commercial fit-outs and the civils work that threads out across South West Wales. The CITB Site Supervisors’ Safety Training Scheme, better known as the SSSTS, is built for that exact moment. Over two days it gives new and established supervisors the health and safety knowledge, the legal grounding and the practical habits needed to run a part of a site properly.

We run the SSSTS as a live online class delivered over a video link, so supervisors right across Swansea and the surrounding area can gain the qualification without giving up two full days to travelling. You are taught in real time by a CITB-approved tutor, you can put questions to them as they come up, and you complete the end-of-course assessment on screen. For anyone who would rather learn face to face, a classroom option is also available. Either way the qualification you walk away with is exactly the same.

What the SSSTS is, and what it is not

The SSSTS is the standard entry-level safety certificate for anyone who holds a supervisory role in construction or civil engineering. It sits within the CITB Site Safety Plus family of courses, is endorsed by CITB and is recognised by the UK Contractors Group. That recognition is the reason it turns up so often in the requirements on Swansea tender documents and site rules: principal contractors and clients want proof that the people directing work on their projects have been trained to a common national standard before they set foot on site.

It is worth pinning down the difference between the two courses that people most often mix up. The SSSTS is a two-day course aimed at supervisors, gangers, foremen and team leaders who look after a trade, a gang or a portion of the works. The SMSTS, the Site Management Safety Training Scheme, is a longer five-day course written for site managers and agents whose job is to plan and control a whole project from the top down. If you are accountable for a section of a job rather than the entire site, the SSSTS is the qualification that matches your role. Should your responsibilities later grow to cover a full site, the SMSTS course is the natural next step up.

Who this course is for in Swansea

This training is written for the people who tell others what to do on site, whether that authority arrived last month or has built up steadily over several years. You are likely to be a good fit if any of the following sound like you:

• You supervise a gang, a trade or a work area on a Swansea construction or civils site as a supervisor, ganger, chargehand or foreman.
• You have recently come off the tools into a first-line management or team-leader position.
• You are a skilled tradesperson who is about to pick up supervisory duties for the first time.
• Part of your day involves running site inductions, delivering toolbox talks and briefing the team each morning.
• You are expected to read, monitor and act on risk assessments and method statements.
• A main contractor or client working anywhere across South West Wales has asked you to hold a current SSSTS before starting.
• You run a firm and want newly promoted supervisors to reach a recognised safety standard quickly.

You do not need a long track record to benefit. Plenty of delegates book their SSSTS in the same fortnight they are handed the promotion, so the certificate and the extra responsibility arrive together. That is exactly the right time to learn the framework, rather than picking it up piecemeal once the pressure is already on.

What the course covers

Across the two days your tutor works steadily through the legal duties a supervisor carries and the practical safety skills that go with them. The emphasis stays firmly on the working day: how you plan a task, brief the people doing it, notice a hazard and deal with it before it causes harm. Rather than theory for its own sake, the sessions keep coming back to what actually happens on a live job. The main areas covered include:

• The Health and Safety at Work Act and where a supervisor’s own duties sit within it.
• An overview of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations and how they shape responsibilities on site.
• Reading, monitoring and clearly communicating risk assessments to a working gang.
• Method statements and safe systems of work, and how to brief them so they are actually followed.
• Running site inductions and toolbox talks that people take in rather than tune out.
• Behavioural safety and the supervisor’s part in building a positive safety culture within a team.
• Managing occupational health, welfare and the everyday hazards found on a construction site.
• Monitoring, reporting and keeping the accurate records that a supervisor is expected to maintain.

Because the class runs live and everyone can speak, the sessions are built around discussion and worked examples instead of a one-way lecture. You will talk through the kinds of situations that crop up on Swansea sites, whether that is a busy city-centre or waterfront regeneration scheme, a housing development, a retail or commercial fit-out, an industrial unit on the edge of the city, or a piece of infrastructure or civils work stretching across the wider region. When something on your own job has been nagging at you, that is the time to raise it with the tutor and get a straight answer.

To give a clearer picture of how the two days are structured, the content breaks down into a handful of themed areas that build on one another as the course goes on:

• Health and safety law: the legislation that governs construction supervision, the legal responsibilities a supervisor personally carries, the role of CITB, and the real consequences of getting compliance wrong for both individuals and the companies they work for.
• Risk management: the principles behind a sound risk assessment, how method statements are written and briefed to a working gang, how to keep control measures in place once the job is underway, and how to handle the common hazards and hazardous substances found on a Swansea site.
• Supervisory responsibilities: what leading on safety actually looks like day to day, how to build and hold onto a positive safety culture, how to challenge poor practice without losing the team, and how to manage subcontractors and visitors coming onto your area.
• Practical safety management: planning ahead for safety, running toolbox talks people remember, carrying out inspections, and dealing properly with accidents through reporting, investigation and honest record-keeping.
• Health and wellbeing: the occupational health issues that dog construction, from noise, vibration and dust through to manual handling and workplace stress, and the welfare standards a supervisor is expected to uphold.
• Environmental issues: a supervisor’s environmental duties on site, sensible waste management, pollution prevention and the more sustainable ways of working that clients increasingly expect.

Each theme is tied back to the working reality of a Swansea supervisor rather than left as abstract policy, so by the end of the second day you have a framework you can put straight to use on Monday morning.

Course structure and assessment

The SSSTS is delivered over two days that run back to back, each one from 08:30 to 16:00, so both sessions are finished by four o’clock. That finish time is deliberate. It leaves supervisors room to handle an early handover on site, sort out childcare, or manage other commitments without a late run of training eating into the evening.

The assessment holds no traps. To gain the qualification you need to:

• Attend both days from start to finish and join in with the group exercises.
• Complete the short activities and knowledge checks that are spread through the sessions.
• Pass a multiple-choice examination sat at the end of the second day.

Our SSSTS courses carry a 98% pass rate, and that figure is not an accident. Because the whole course is taught live, the tutor is checking understanding as they go, catching the points that people find tricky and clearing them up long before the exam. Engage properly across the two days and the paper at the end tends to feel like a summary of everything you have already talked through, not a test of anything new.

Entry requirements

There are no formal entry requirements for the SSSTS, and you do not need to hold any previous safety qualification to book. What does matter is your English. All of the course material and the examination paper are in English, so you will need a sound standard of spoken and written English to follow the sessions and complete the assessment comfortably. A bit of construction experience helps you relate the content to real situations, but it is not a condition of attending.

For the live online class there is a small amount of kit to have ready. You will need a computer, laptop or tablet fitted with a webcam and a microphone, both of which are built into most modern devices, plus a reasonably steady internet connection. If you have ever taken part in a video call, you already have everything the course asks for. We send clear joining instructions ahead of the start date so you can check your setup in advance and log in without any last-minute scramble.

Why train online from Swansea

Swansea and the towns around it keep a steady volume of construction and civils work moving, from waterfront and city-centre regeneration through to housing, commercial and industrial schemes and the infrastructure that runs out across South West Wales. Supervisors need to stay qualified and available, and learning by live video link takes away the two things that usually make that awkward: the travelling and the time off site.

Instead of losing extra hours to a long drive, or booking an overnight stay just to reach a training centre, your supervisors log in from home, from the site cabin or from anywhere with a connection, and they learn in a genuine tutor-led classroom. It keeps people close to their jobs, strips out the fuel and parking costs, and makes it far simpler to release two or three staff from the same firm on the same dates. Whether your team is based in Swansea itself or out in Neath, Port Talbot, Llanelli, Gorseinon, Gowerton or the villages beyond, everyone joins the same course and nobody has to work out where to leave the van.

None of the quality is lost by going remote. You watch and listen to the tutor in real time, you speak up the second a question forms, and you sit precisely the same assessment as anyone in a physical classroom. If you genuinely learn better in a room full of people, the classroom option is still open to you. For most Swansea supervisors, though, the live online route is simply the more sensible way to get certified and get back to work.

What SSSTS training gives a Swansea site

A trained supervisor changes how a job runs, and not only on paper. The person who has sat the SSSTS understands why the method statement is written the way it is, so they brief it with conviction instead of reading it out. They spot the scaffold tag that has not been signed, the exclusion zone that has drifted, the young worker who has slipped through the induction, and they deal with it before it becomes an incident. On a busy Swansea site with several trades working around one another, that early intervention is often the difference between a near miss and a serious injury.

For employers there is a straightforward commercial case as well. Most principal contractors across South West Wales now treat a current SSSTS as a baseline requirement for anyone in a supervisory role, so keeping your team certified is frequently what lets you onto the site in the first place. Beyond meeting that requirement, a workforce that shares a common safety language tends to lose less time to stoppages, disputes and rework, and carries a stronger story when it comes to prequalification and tendering. Putting a newly promoted supervisor through the SSSTS early is one of the cheaper investments a construction firm can make, and one of the ones that pays back most reliably.

Because we run the course by live video link, an employer can put several supervisors through together without stripping the site of everyone at once or footing a bill for travel and overnight stays. Two people from the same firm can train from the same site cabin on the same dates, or from home, and be back to full strength immediately afterwards. It is a practical way to raise the safety competence of a whole team while keeping disruption to the running of the job as low as possible.

Pricing

The CITB SSSTS course costs £199 for the live online video-link class and £279 for the classroom option. That price covers the full two days of tutor-led training, all of your course materials and the end-of-course examination, with nothing else to add on afterwards. Once you pass you are issued with the CITB Site Safety Plus SSSTS certificate, which is valid for five years. When it nears expiry you renew it by sitting a one-day SSSTS Refresher rather than repeating the full two-day course, which keeps the time and cost of staying current to a minimum. The SSSTS may also be claimable through the CITB grant scheme where your firm is registered and eligible, so it is worth checking your position before you book.

How to book

Booking your SSSTS in Swansea only takes a few minutes. Choose the live online or classroom option, pick a date that fits around your site commitments and reserve your place at booking.skillstg.co.uk/course/SSSTS. If you are putting several supervisors through together, or you want the training to line up neatly with a project starting on site, give our team a call on 0808 164 2780. We can help you find dates that suit, talk you through the technology for the online class and sort out any group arrangements so the whole crew is certified and ready when the job begins.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the SSSTS course and what time does each day finish?

The SSSTS runs over two days. Each day starts at 08:30 and finishes at 16:00, so you are done by four o’clock on both days. You need to attend both days in full to gain the qualification, as full attendance is part of the assessment.

What is the difference between the SSSTS and the SMSTS?

The SSSTS is a two-day course for supervisors, gangers, foremen and first-line managers who look after a section of the work. The SMSTS is a five-day course aimed at site managers and agents who plan and control an entire site. If your role is to supervise a team or a trade rather than run the whole project, the SSSTS is the one you need.

Do I have to travel to a venue in Swansea to attend?

No. We deliver the SSSTS as a live online class over a video link, so supervisors across Swansea and South West Wales can qualify from home or the site office without travelling anywhere. If you would sooner learn in person, a classroom option is available as well.

Is the online SSSTS recognised by contractors in Swansea and across Wales?

Yes. The certificate is the same whichever way you attend. The SSSTS is endorsed by CITB and recognised by the UK Contractors Group, so it is accepted by principal contractors and clients working across Swansea, South West Wales and the wider construction industry.

How much does the SSSTS course cost and what is included?

The live online video-link class is £199 and the classroom option is £279. Both prices include the two days of tutor-led training, your course materials and the final examination, with no extra charges to follow.

How long is the SSSTS certificate valid and how do I renew it?

The CITB SSSTS certificate lasts for five years. To keep it live you take a one-day SSSTS Refresher course before it runs out, which saves you sitting the full two-day course a second time.

Do I need any experience or qualifications before I book?

There are no formal entry requirements and no previous safety qualification is needed. You do need a good standard of spoken and written English, since the materials and exam are in English. Some construction experience is useful but not essential, which is why many people take the SSSTS just as they move into a supervisory role.

Modules breakdown

Our comprehensive SSSTS training covers the following key areas:

Health and Safety Law

• Current legislation affecting construction supervision
• Legal responsibilities of supervisors on site
• Understanding Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) requirements
• Health and safety regulations specific to construction activities
• Consequences of non-compliance for individuals and companies

Risk Management

• Principles of risk assessment
• Understanding and implementing method statements
• Delivering method statement briefings for workers
• Managing common site hazards effectively
• Control measures for various construction activities
• Managing hazardous substances

Supervisory Responsibilities

• The supervisor’s role in safety management
• Building and maintaining a positive safety culture
• Identifying and addressing bad practice
• Effective communication techniques
• Managing subcontractors and visitors
• Conducting site inductions and safety briefings

Practical Safety Management

• Planning for site safety
• Conducting effective toolbox talks
• Safety inspection procedures
• Accident reporting and investigation
• Record-keeping requirements
• Promoting safety awareness among workers

Health and Wellbeing

• Occupational health concerns in construction
• Behavioural safety approaches
• Managing workplace stress
• Noise, vibration and dust exposure
• Manual handling best practices
• Worker welfare requirements

Environmental Issues

• Environmental responsibilities on site
• Waste management and reduction
• Energy efficiency considerations
• Pollution prevention
• Sustainable construction practices
• Regulatory compliance

Course Structure

The CITB SSSTS course is delivered over two consecutive days through our professional remote learning platform:

• Led by experienced instructors with extensive construction backgrounds
• Interactive sessions with fellow construction professionals
• Comprehensive digital training materials provided
• Practical scenarios and case studies
• Group discussions and knowledge-sharing opportunities

Full attendance across both days is required to qualify for the examination. The course combines theoretical knowledge with practical application to ensure relevance to daily supervisory duties.