While main contractors and large construction companies have made great strides in improving health and safety on site over the last 10 years, injury and fatality rates on small and medium sized construction projects remain stubbornly static. It is questionable if the improvements achieved by main contractors have been as a result of CDM or from stakeholder pressures. Certainly the increased responsibility placed on the Client in the 2007 regulations has helped, where the clients are larger and better-informed, but many clients and contractors still view CDM as a bureaucratic paper chase without fully understanding the requirements of the process.

The HSE are concerned about this fact and carried out a review of CDM2007, in conjunction with the construction industry advisory body CONIAC.

‘Bureaucracy is still problematic and a primary source of dissatisfaction to the industry. For those who favour it, often as a way of transferring the risk of non-compliance to others, there is little within the existing CDM portfolio to clearly identify it as bad practice.’ – CONIAC meeting July 2013 – Evaluation of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 – A paper by Andrew Maxey.

With an industry and economy slowly climbing out of recession, there is little appetite for extra burden on business, but a distinct possibility that CDM will change in 2014 because as a nation, we are in non-compliance with ‘EU Directive 92/57/EEC – temporary or mobile construction sites’ as we have exempted domestic clients from any responsibility on projects. The HSE and CONIAC have recognised the need for change and do not want to discard those areas they feel are effective, but with a government committed to stopping ‘gold plating’ of legislation from Europe and committed to direct ‘copy out’ of European directives, what can we look forward to?

If we see a direct copy out, the responsibilities for safety will still rest with the Client, but be extended to cover domestic clients. It is likely however, and possible under the scope of the directive, that the Client may pass this responsibility to the contractor but how this will happen, is still unclear. Projects where there is only one contractor will also be less onerous, but there will still be a need to plan health and safety in all instances.

Notifiability is also likely to change, but not dramatically (although as outlined above, domestic projects may also become notifiable), as the directive currently states that where work is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and on which more than 20 workers are occupied simultaneously, or on which the volume of work is scheduled to exceed 500 person-days, the client or the project supervisor shall communicate a prior notice to the competent authorities before work starts. This would be similar to the current need for F10 submission on notifiable projects under CDM2007.

Gone would be the role of Principal Contractor and the CDM Coordinator and in would come two new role holders – Coordinators for Safety and Health matters at the project preparation stage and Coordinators for Safety and Health matters at the project execution stage. It is possible within the scope of the directive that these can be internal appointments, but it is likely that on larger projects, these may be two different entities.

The first, the coordinators for project preparation stage, may be fulfill a similar role to the current CDMCs and may require a similar skill set and I can foresee that this will be a role strongly aimed at designers. The directive places great emphasis on the responsibilities of those involved in the design process to employ the principles of prevention, which are in line with UK duties under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. The role of the coordinators for project preparation stage will be to ensure this happens.

Coordinators for project execution stage however, seems to me to be a role more suited to the contractor, in more of a site-safety coordination role. This must be done in proportion with the levels of risk involved in the project and there seems little in the regulations to suggest this must be a stand-alone entity. On larger projects I think this is likely to be an independent appointment but on smaller projects I see no reason why it could not be done by suitably trained site managers.

In both cases, they will be responsible for ensuring parties communicate regarding risk during design and build and that the required plans and paperwork are in place. Little change from the current format here.

The Construction Phase Plan is likely to be replaced by the Safety and Health Plan, which looks to be a fairly similar document. The extent to which it becomes a paper chase though is likely to be down to the coordinators of safety, but it is hoped that the ‘proportional risk’ message will be emphasised.

One area of interest, which I think will reduce bureaucracy, will be the HSEs wish to see a vastly reduced Approved Code of Practice (ACoP), replaced instead by industry guidance documents. The requirement will be for duty holders to satisfy the regulations, not to blindly follow the ACoP, which should go some way to reducing the torrent of generic paperwork currently frustrating everyone involved.

Another area of change, is likely to be the removal of the formulaic ‘competence assessments’ many organisations seem to have adopted as a result of CDM2007- currently the headache of many contracting businesses. Some have suggested this might mean there will be no need to check the competence of appointees in future, but I don’t think so. Everyone has duties to check contractors under the Health and Safety at Work Act, but at least it will be an opportunity to make checks proportional.

Earlier in the article I said there was a distinct chance of new regulations in 2014/15 to leave some room for manoeuvre. The HSE were due to publish a 12-week public consultation in the late summer of 2013, with a view to revised regulations coming into force in October 2014, but as the leaves on the trees are falling and we get the first early frosts, there is still no sign of any consultation. That coupled with an election in May 2015, in which at least one of the possible winners is proposing a referendum on Europe, and an industry reluctant to see further change, who knows what will happen!

Additionally I understand the directive is currently up for review so watch this space – perhaps…