The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 apply to every construction project in Great Britain, from a two-day shopfit to a hospital. There is no size threshold for the regulations themselves — only for notification and for some of the appointment duties.
The structure is simple once the vocabulary is clear: five duty holders, three principal documents, and a sequence that runs from before design starts to after the building is handed over.
The duty holders
Client
The organisation or individual for whom the project is carried out. The client must make suitable arrangements for managing the project, ensure they are maintained and reviewed, provide pre-construction information to designers and contractors, ensure the principal designer and principal contractor carry out their duties, ensure welfare facilities are provided, and — where there is more than one contractor — appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor in writing. If they do not appoint, the client takes on those duties itself.
Domestic clients — people having work done on their own home, not in connection with a business — have their duties passed automatically to the contractor, or to the principal contractor where there is more than one, or to the principal designer if there is a written agreement to that effect.
Principal designer
Appointed where there is more than one contractor. Plans, manages and monitors the pre-construction phase; coordinates health and safety matters in design; helps the client compile the pre-construction information and provide it to others; liaises with the principal contractor; and prepares the health and safety file.
Designer
Anyone who prepares or modifies a design, or arranges for it — which includes architects, engineers, and contractors doing design work such as temporary works. Designers must eliminate foreseeable risks so far as reasonably practicable, reduce or control what remains, and provide information about the residual risks with the design.
Principal contractor
Appointed where there is more than one contractor. Plans, manages and monitors the construction phase; coordinates all contractors; prepares the construction phase plan; ensures site inductions, welfare and site security; and consults with workers.
Contractor
Anyone who carries out, manages or controls construction work. Plans, manages and monitors their own work; complies with directions from the principal contractor; does not start work until reasonable steps have been taken to prevent unauthorised access; and provides workers with information, instruction, training and supervision. Where there is only one contractor, that contractor prepares the construction phase plan.
Workers themselves have duties too: to look after their own health and safety and that of others, to cooperate, to report anything likely to endanger anyone, and to be consulted on health and safety matters. Who writes which document is set out in who is responsible for producing a RAMS.
Notification
A project must be notified to HSE, using form F10, where construction work is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point, or where it will exceed 500 person-days. Notification is the client's duty, and must happen as soon as practicable before the construction phase begins.
Two persistent misconceptions are worth killing. First: notification does not switch CDM on — the regulations already apply. Second: it is not the trigger for appointing a principal designer and principal contractor; that trigger is more than one contractor, which happens on a great many unnotifiable projects.
The three documents
Pre-construction information
Assembled by the client with the principal designer's help and provided to every designer and contractor. It covers the existing environment and structures, the asbestos survey and register, buried and overhead services, ground conditions, the client's own rules and constraints, and any information from previous projects. It has to be relevant, proportionate and provided in time to be useful. See pre-construction information for the detail.
Construction phase plan
Prepared before the construction phase begins, by the principal contractor, or by the contractor where there is only one. It sets out the health and safety arrangements for the site, the site rules, and the arrangements for controlling the significant risks. It is a living document, revised as the project changes. It is not a RAMS and does not replace one — construction phase plan versus RAMS covers the difference.
Health and safety file
Prepared by the principal designer for projects with more than one contractor, and handed to the client at the end. It contains the information the next people to work on the structure will need to do so safely. See health and safety file requirements.
RAMS sit underneath all three. The regulations do not name them, but they are how a contractor evidences the planning that regulation 15 requires and the risk assessment that regulation 3 of the Management Regulations requires. Where a package needs several of these documents at once, submitting them together is what makes the cross-checks between them possible.
The timeline
- Client establishes the project and makes arrangements for managing it.
- Client appoints the principal designer in writing, before or at the start of design.
- Pre-construction information is assembled and issued to designers and contractors, and updated as more becomes known.
- Designers eliminate and reduce risk, and pass residual risk information on.
- Client appoints the principal contractor in writing before the construction phase.
- Principal contractor prepares the construction phase plan before work starts on site.
- Client notifies HSE on form F10 if the thresholds are met.
- Contractors produce RAMS for their packages; the principal contractor reviews and coordinates them.
- Work proceeds, with inspections, inductions, briefings and revisions throughout.
- Principal designer compiles the health and safety file — or the principal contractor completes it if the principal designer's appointment ends first — and it is handed to the client at completion.
Welfare
Schedule 2 is not optional and is checked on almost every HSE site visit: toilets, washing facilities with hot and cold water, drinking water, changing rooms and lockers, and a facility for rest and for eating meals. The client must ensure suitable welfare is provided, and the principal contractor must ensure it is maintained throughout. Facilities must be available from the start of the construction phase, not once the site is established.
Common failures
- Assuming CDM only applies to notifiable projects.
- Verbal appointments — regulation 5 requires them in writing.
- Pre-construction information issued after the contractor has already priced and planned the work.
- A construction phase plan that is a generic template with the site name changed.
- Nobody compiling the health and safety file until completion week.
- Treating the principal designer role as a job title to be filled rather than a set of duties to be carried out with the skills, knowledge and experience regulation 8 requires.
Enforcement follows the same pattern as everywhere else in health and safety law: improvement notices, prohibition notices, Fee For Intervention where a material breach is identified, and prosecution in serious cases. What triggers an HSE investigation covers how it usually begins.
This article is general guidance on UK construction documentation practice. It is not legal advice, a compliance certification or a substitute for review by your own qualified health and safety personnel, who remain responsible for deciding whether any particular document is adequate. See our disclaimer.