Graham + Sibbald comments on CDM 2007

A new Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) has also been prepared, providing guidance to all duty holders on their responsibilities as identified in the new Regulations.

The principal aim of the new Regulations is to ensure that health and safety issues are considered, planned and managed at the earliest opportunity from a projects inception through to initial design, build and future maintenance responsibilities throughout the structures anticipated life cycle.  It is intended that the new Regulations will reduce bureaucracy and focus integration between all appropriate duty holders by adopting a common sense approach, ultimately ensuring health and safety performance is improved.

Paul Docherty, Partner at Graham + Sibbald comments: “It is important that property professionals, particularly those who currently fulfil Planning Supervisor roles under CDM 1994, make Clients aware of the increased explicit duties which the new Regulations impose on them. This in turn will hopefully allow the Clients to ensure compliance and engage the services of suitably competent organisations to co-ordinate issues associated with CDM 2007”.

The new Regulations place increased responsibility on individual duty holders, in particular Clients, where greater emphasis is placed to ensure they provide adequate resources to facilitate safe project delivery.  It is no longer acceptable for Clients to sit back on appointment of their advisers and consider their role fulfilled.  The Regulations place far greater responsibility on clients to ensure their duties are met with regard to Health & Safety Standards, and make them accountable where such standards are not achieved.

The Regulations also create a new duty holder, known as a CDM Co-ordinator (CDMC), which principally replaces the Planning Supervisor role from CDM 1994.  The CDMC role should not however be seen as just a name change, as significantly increased responsibility comes with the new role.  The CDMC becomes the principal Client Adviser on any project, responsible for co-ordination and management of all duty holders and providing advice to the Client on each duty holders competence and adequacy of information being provided.  It is the CDMC’s responsibility to ensure that the flow of information is exchanged and integrated between all appropriate parties throughout the design and construction process by effective communication, from issue of the initial Pre-Construction Information Pack, which replaces the current Pre-Construction Plan, to final information in gathering and preparation of the project Health & Safety Plan.

The new Regulations place far greater emphasis on an organisations ability to demonstrate competence to fulfil their designated role, whether this be CDMC, Designer or Contractor.  Duty holders will require to demonstrate their experience in similar projects to confirm that they are capable of achieving the role.  Where this proves problematic, limitations must be acknowledged and addressed. Where such limitations create risk and prove insurmountable, then it must be recognised that such organisations are not competent to fulfil the designated role.

The new Legislation would appear to dictate that greater time involvement will be required from specific duty holders to enable them to satisfactorily achieve the increased duties and responsibilities which the Regulations necessitate.  With particular regard to the CDMC role, Clients will require to acknowledge that fee scales will undoubtedly increase.  As the CDMC role is new, the time involvement in providing the increased service is difficult to quantify at present.  It is not however unreasonable to suggest that fees previously recognised as appropriate to the Planning Supervision Role could double to reflect time involved in fulfilling the new CDMC position.

Paul Docherty concludes: “Whilst many of the standards contained in CDM 2007 were in place between CDM 1994 and CHSW Regulations 1996, specific elements are far more explicit in their application to individual duty holders, in particular Clients and the new CDMC role.  It is however hoped that increased co-ordination and communication that the new Regulations promote between duty holders will in the long run improve overall health and safety performance of a structure not only during the design and construction process, however throughout its overall life cycle”.