| Area of Changes |
Proposed Changes |
| 1 |
Application and modification |
- There should only be two types of construction projects: notifiable and non-notifiable
- As the proposed requirements would apply to notifiable projects but the requirements relating to appointments, plans and other paperwork would not apply to non-notifiable projects
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| 2 |
Competence |
- The current CDM regulations require clients and other to appoint competent planning supervisors, designers, principal contractors and contractors. While this principle is generally accepted, HSE has ascertained that the common view is that the arrangements adopted by most clients (and other CDM duty holders) do not ensure competence. Instead, they have tended to become bureaucratic form filling exercises
- HSE has commissioned research to establish current good practice in this area
- There is also a proposed new duty on appointees to make sure that they are competent to do what they are appointed for. They are usually in a better position to make that judgement than the person appointing them
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| 3 |
Co-operation |
- There are currently various duties on designers and contractors to co-operate with the planning supervisor, other designers or the principal contractor. These have been drawn together into a single requirement for everyone involved in the project to co-operate with others to enable them to carry out their duties under the revised regulations.
- The draft regulations also extend this duty to require co-operation between different projects on the same or adjoining sites
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| 4 |
Worker engagement |
- HSE believes it would be desirable to place a duty on principal contractors to carry out meaningful worker consultation. Reg. 24 aims to improve worker engagement on sites where CDM applies, thereby promoting a positive safety culture in the industry
- Through this requirement, HSE are hoping to achieve proper consultation with the workforce including:
- A management commitment to providing information to, and receiving information from, the workforce
- Effective procedures put in place for consultation dialogue and/or through a planned, managed and structured approach
- Evidence that workers views are properly taken into account
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| 5 |
Client’s role |
- HSE are proposing a new duty on clients to ensure that suitable project management arrangements for health and safety are in place
- Clients should be able to rely on the advice and support of their construction team and, in particular, the co-ordinator
- HSE do not propose to retain the current provisions on agents with the potentially anomalous freedom this gives clients to absolve themselves of their legal obligations. The aim is to prevent anyone retaining control while avoiding accountability
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| 6 |
Planning Supervisors |
- HSE proposes to:
- Create a new function – the co-ordinator- to advise and assist the client
- Place responsibility on clients to ensure that the co-ordinator’s duties are carried out – only they have the information and authority to empower the co-ordinator
- Explicitly require the co-ordinator to be appointed at a before design work starts / initial stages, with corresponding duties on designers and contractors not to begin work unless a co-ordinator has been appointed; and
- Require the client to ensure that the arrangements for managing the projects include the allocation of adequate resources (including time)
- Although the role of co-ordinator has been developed from that of the planning supervisor, HSE sees the two roles as being substantially different in their duties and structure – with the co-ordinator’s function being to assist the client, designer and contractor in achieving better health and safety on site
- In developing the proposals, HSE has focussed on the tasks that need to be carried out rather than the person performing them
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| 7 |
Designers |
- HSE recognises that the wording of the current CDM regulation 13 is not well understood. It does not communicate simply the factors that designers must take into account when exercising their judgement
- One of the primary aims of the revised regulations is to clarify the designers’ duties, so that the wording is clearer and less subjective
- HSE wants to be clear that it expects designers to exercise their professional judgement in a responsible way, not to unreasonably restrict their creativity
- HSE wants designers to focus on how their decisions are likely to affect those constructing, maintaining, using or demolishing the structures that they have designed and what they can do, in the design, to remove the hazards
- The current ACoP and guidance already sets out most of this and there is no plan to change these standards
- Currently, designers have no duty under CDM to ensure that their designs are safe to use. However, occupiers of workplaces have to ensure that the finished structure complies with other health and safety law, particularly the Workplace Regulations. To ensure that these new issues are addressed at the design stage, HSE proposes to extend designers’ duties for fixed workplaces (e.g. offices, shops, schools, hospitals and factories) to cover safe use. HSE suggests that competent designers should be doing this already – so this is likely to require minimal additional work in practice
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| 8 |
Principal Contractors |
- HSE has not identified any need to change the Principal Contractor’s role significantly
- The only substantial proposal is to make explicit, in the Regulations, the Principal Contractor’s key role in managing the construction phase to ensure that it is carried out so far as is reasonably practicable, safely and without risk to health
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| 9 |
Contractors |
- The only substantive change proposed regarding contractors is to make explicit their duty to plan, manage and monitor their own work. The intention is that the proposed management duties on principal contractors and contractors should complement one another, with the contractor’s duty focussing their own work and the principal contractor’s on the co-ordination of the work of the various contractors
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| 10 |
Mobilisation periods |
- To address the issue of insufficient mobilisation time in the Regulations, HSE proposes to require:
- Clients to allow sufficient resources – this explicitly includes time
- The co-ordinator to tell prospective principal contractors and contractors that are appointed by the client (and similarly for the principal contractor to tell other prospective contractors) the minimum notice which they will be allowed between appointment and commencement of work to plan and prepare for construction work; and
- The client and the principal contractor to ensure that adequate welfare facilities are in place at the start of the construction phase of notifiable projects – an additional means of ensuring that services are in place at the start and reasonable time is allowed
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| 11 |
Pre-tender / Pre-construction plans |
- HSE wants to encourage the communication of relevant information, rather than a focus on particular documents. As part of this, it proposes to replace the current pre-tender or pre-construction plan with a requirement to provide information to:
- Focus attention on communication of the information that designers and contractors need to plan and do their work – not a particular document or plan setting out what is to be done and:
- Make it clear that this is not about producing one document for everyone, at any one particular stage in the project, but providing the right information to the right people at the right time, throughout the project
- For convenience, this has been called the information pack, but it is really about the flow of information around the project team during the early stages of the project. Although all members of the project will play a part in ensuring the right information gets to the right people at the right time, HSE sees this as a particularly important function of the co-ordinator
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| 12 |
Health & Safety File |
- Under the current requirements, a separate health and safety file is required for each project. HSE believes that it would be more useful to have one for each site, structure or occasionally group of structures – e.g. bridges along a road. The file can then be developed over time as information is added from different projects
- There are also opportunities to link the health and safety file with other documents such as the Building Regulations Log Book
- The potential practical value of the information contained in the file is also likely to increase as more clients make use of the Internet to share this information with designers and contractors
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| 13 |
Domestic Clients |
- Imposing CDM duties is not straightforward and HSE does not believe that it is practical to place legal duties on domestic clients, particularly to appoint competent people. HSE therefore proposes to continue the exemption
- The net effect of the current proposals is that, as now, the regulations would apply to all domestic projects but there would be no need for a domestic client to appoint a principal contractor or co-ordinator to notify the HSE of the project, or to produce a health and safety plan or file.
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| 14 |
Structure of the Regulations |
- To make it easier for people to identify what they (and others) need to do, the structure of the proposed Regulations has been altered, so that the duties are now grouped by dutyholder
- To make life simpler and easier, including by drawing client’s and designers’ attention to practical size issues, the proposal is to merge the CHSW regulations with the CDM regulations but with the Work at Height Regulations replacing a significant part of the CHS regulations
- The revision is mainly intended to simplify and clarify the wording if the CHSW Regulations, without making substantive changes, however, has been to broaden the duty regarding explosives to cover the important issues of security and safety of storage and transport, as well as safety in use
- Some issues already covered by the Workplace Regulations are particularly important in construction. These include traffic management and lighting. Because these are so important HSE proposes to duplicate aspects of the Workplace regulations requirement in the new construction regulations although that is not legally necessary
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| 15 |
Demolition |
- To address demolition and to simplify the current CHSW regulation 10 requirement, the draft requires that “the demolition” or dismantling of a structure, or part of a structure, shall be planned and carried out in such a manner as to prevent, so far as is practicable, danger”. It also introduces a new, explicit requirement to record the arrangements for carrying out demolition and dismantling in writing.
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| 16 |
Civil Liability |
- The Management Regulations (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) were later amended to provide employees with a right of action in civil proceedings in relation to breach of duties by their employer. To maintain consistency HSE propose to carry forwards the current rights of civil action in CDM and CHSW and also to allow employees to take action in the civil courts for injuries resulting from a failure to comply with duties under these Regulations.
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| 17 |
Enforcement |
- Under the proposals, HSE would be the enforcing authority for:
- All notifiable construction work, except for that undertaken by people in Local Authority (LA) – enforced premises who normally work on the premises
- Work done to the exterior of the premises and
- Work done in segregated areas
- This would not change the enforcing Authority on any particular site but would give Las the opportunity to use CDM
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