Health & Safety Information
- This is an abridged extract. For the full version please visit the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website www.hse.gov.uk.
- Want construction work done safely?
- A short guide for clients on the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015.
- What does CDM 2015 do?
- Complying with CDM 2015 will help ensure that no-one is harmed during the work, and that your building is safe to use and maintain while giving you good value. Effective planning will also help ensure that your work is well managed with fewer unexpected costs and problems.
- What do clients need to do?
- Many clients, particularly those who only occasionally have construction work done, are not experts in construction work. Although you are not expected to actively manage or supervise the work yourself, you have a big influence over the way the work is carried out. Whatever the size of your project, you decide which designer and contractor will carry out the work and how much money, time and resource is available.
The decisions you make have an impact on the health, safety and welfare of workers and others affected by the work CDM 2015 is not about creating unnecessary and unhelpful processes and paperwork. It is about choosing the right team and helping them to work together to ensure health and safety. - What will the Regulations do?
- These Regulations will help you ensure that your construction project is safe to build, safe to use, safe to maintain and delivers you good value.
Good health and safety planning will also help ensure that your project is well managed and that unexpected costs and problems are minimised. - How We Use Your Information
- Our web site uses the data we collect for three basic purposes: to operate our business and provide (including improving and personalising) the services we offer, to send communications, including promotional communications, and to display advertising. In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect through the various web site services you use to give you a more seamless, consistent and personalized experience. However, to enhance privacy, we have built in technological and procedural safeguards designed to prevent certain data combinations. For example, we store data we collect from you when you are unauthenticated (not signed in) separately from any account information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address or phone number.
- As a client, you need to do the following:
- Appoint the right people at the right time
- Ensure there are arrangements in place for managing and organising the project
- Allow adequate time
- Provide information to your designer and contractor
- Communicate with your designer and building contractor
- Ensure adequate welfare facilities on site
- Ensure a construction phase plan is in place
- Keep the health and safety file
- Protecting members of the public, including your employees
- Ensure workplaces are designed correctly
- Domestic clients
- For some construction work (work lasting longer than 30 days with more than 20 workers working at the same time, or involving 500 person days of work), you need to notify HSE of the project as soon as possible before construction work starts. In practice, you may request someone else to do this on your behalf.
If you are having work done on your own home, or the home of a family member, and it is not in connection with a business, you will be a domestic client. The only responsibility a domestic client has under CDM 2015 is to appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor when there is more than one contractor. However, if you do not do this, (as is common practice) your duties as a domestic client are automatically transferred to the contractor or principal contractor. If you already have a relationship with your designer before the work starts, the designer can take on your duties, provided there is a written agreement between you and the designer to do so.