CDM 2015 qualified with SMSTS site management. Formal appointment in either role, or both, with the construction phase plan, the health and safety file and the coordination duties actually carried out rather than filed. Professional Indemnity and Contractors All Risks cover on every project.
Pre-construction information gathered, foreseeable risks designed out at the drawing stage, and the designers coordinated. It is a design-stage role, and appointing somebody to it after the build has started largely defeats the purpose.
Construction phase plan written for the actual job, site rules enforced, inductions given, contractors coordinated and the site kept safe and secure. SMSTS trained, with the experience to go with the certificate.
Assembled as the work happens and handed over complete: what is buried where, what the structure does, what a future contractor needs to know. On a listed or church building it is genuinely valuable rather than a formality.
Working at height, fragile roofs, asbestos, lifting operations and confined spaces are dealt with by changing the method where it can be changed, and only managed by control measures where it cannot.
Professional Indemnity and Contractors All Risks cover in place on every project, with evidence available to you, your funder or your insurer before work starts.
Householders carry CDM duties as well, and most have never been told. Where we act, those duties transfer to us, which is one of the quieter but more valuable parts of engaging somebody qualified.
The Principal Designer is responsible for health and safety during the pre-construction phase: gathering the information, coordinating the designers and making sure risks are designed out before anyone is on site. The Principal Contractor is responsible during construction: the phase plan, site rules, inductions and coordinating the contractors doing the work. On any project with more than one contractor, both must be appointed in writing.
Yes, and this surprises almost everybody. CDM 2015 applies to domestic projects, and where a homeowner has not appointed anyone in writing the duties default onto the contractor or the designer. It is far better to appoint properly and know where the duties sit than to discover the position after an incident, particularly if your insurer takes an interest.
It can, and on a great many small and medium projects it is the sensible arrangement, because the coordination between the two roles then happens automatically rather than across a gap. What matters is that both sets of duties are genuinely carried out and that the skills, knowledge and experience for each are there.
The Site Management Safety Training Scheme is the recognised site management safety qualification in UK construction. It matters because Principal Contractor duties are about managing a live site, and the certificate demonstrates that the person doing it has been trained in the legal framework and the practical control of a construction site rather than just being experienced.
Professional Indemnity, which covers the advice and design coordination side, and Contractors All Risks, which covers the works themselves. Evidence of both is available before a contract is signed, and funders, grant bodies and church insurers routinely ask for it, so it is provided as a matter of course.
Yes. The Principal Designer role is a distinct appointment and does not have to sit with the architect, though it often does. Where an architect prefers not to hold it, or where the client wants the construction health and safety coordination held by somebody with site management experience, we take the appointment and work alongside the architect on the design.
Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset, with the towns and villages in between covered as a matter of course. Work further afield in the South West is taken on where the project suits us and we can give it the attention it needs.
Every project starts with a conversation, long before it starts on site.