member of the health and safety register administered by the ICE, membership of the Association for Project Safety, mem- bership of the Institution of Construction Safety and of course, most important of all, evidence of significant work on similar projects with comparable hazards, com- plexity and procurement route. Many of the construction industry’s
leading commercial clients are now ad- vocating the use of experienced, knowl- edgeable CDMCs as construction health and safety consultants having discovered the tangible benefits they bring to their projects for
remarkably modest costs
- and it is not only the clients that have been benefitting from this service but also the designers and contractors. So, if clients are wanting to employ advisers with demonstrable skills, knowledge and experience in design, construction and health and safety, and so many designers are apprehensive of taking on health and safety responsibilities being suggested in the HSE’s proposed Principal Designer role, then the answer is surely for project teams to equip themselves with a compe- tent and capable CDM Consultant, with a capability proportionate to the complexity of the project involved. The big clients see the project and finan-
cial benefits of employing a good CDM Consultant and professional clients such as Housing Associations, Councils and Developers should probably all be work- ing to this model going forward. I can accept that this is not necessarily
going to happen with the smaller one-off clients and contractors, the very area of the industry where there are most con- cerns, but this has always been a difficult market to ‘convert’. Only a concentrated effort by the HSE based around un-an- nounced inspections of smaller sites,
together with a great deal of education of both designers and contractors, is going to see improvements at this end of the industry. I don’t wish to sound defeatist but how do you educate one-off clients if you have no way of knowing who they are or when they are going to start a construction project? We will have to rely on the people they appoint to ensure that suitable health and safety management arrangements are put in place. In terms of designers, that means our
design institutes have a lot of work to do to ensure that their members are completely familiar with new CDM and risk management generally, at
well, least familiar
enough to know when they do not know enough and need to bring in a CDM Consultant to advise and assist both them and the client. The HSE’s
Designers are usually good coordinators as this is part and parcel of a design- er’s role. Designers need to look at the Principal Designer role as less about being an expert in health and safety and more about being a good coordinator of information. If they really want to deal with the ‘health and safety’ issues and have the capability, then great. If they don’t have the capability, then they will need to go looking for someone who does and can provide them with independent advice and assistance.
CDM2015
proposals may well help in this regard as archi- tects, surveyors and engineers will find
themselves
on many projects automatically appointed as the Principal Designer with an associated legal responsibility for
coordinating
the design phase health and safety.
10
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