Construction remains one of the highest risk sectors, with over one fatality occurring each week despite the improvements made in recent years. The revised CDM Regulations aim to improve the level of health and safety performance in the construction industry by clarifying the responsibilities of each duty holder and focusing on effective planning and risk management.

Stephen Williams, Chief Inspector of Construction, HSE said: "The industry has worked very closely with HSE to revise the CDM Regulations and ensure that there are clear benefits for all competent dutyholders. The Regulations clarify responsibilities of each duty holder and require greater focus on the risks to be managed by all involved in the construction process. Underlying all the changes is one simple aim - to reduce the unacceptable number of fatalities and injuries in the construction industry."

Revised CDM
The revised CDM Regulations will introduce the following changes:

• Clarify construction client responsibilities when they are exercising their influence over the health and safety standards on their projects.
  
• Replace the role of Planning Supervisor with a new role of CDM co-ordinator. The co-ordinator will act as the client's key advisor on health and safety issues, particularly effective communication and co-ordination of health and safety information.
  
• Emphasise the importance of competence at all levels in securing health and safety benefits, whilst simplifying the assessment of competence.
  
• Drive out needless health and safety paperwork and bureaucracy. Paperwork should be project-specific, relevant, proportionate to the risk, and of real use in helping to manage the risk.
  
• Simplify when a project is notifiable, and formal plans and appointments are required. Projects will be notifiable if they will involve more than 30 days or 500 person days of construction work. No projects for a domestic client will be notifiable. Formal plans and appointments are only required for notifiable projects.

Critical
A small business pressure group, the Forum of Private Business , has previously been critical of the regulations as they claim the changes would pass responsibilities from the construction firm to the business having the work carried out, which they claim woud be nightmare for smaller businesses having buiding work carried out.

See also:

MPs move to oppose changes to safety regs - Hardhatter, March 2007

Call for MPs to oppose new H&S regulations - Hardhatter, March 2007

Construction regulation delay welcomed - Hardhatter, Dec, 2006

Commission approves safety regulations - Hardhatter, Oct, 2006

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Susie Hughes
The Editor © Hardhatter 2007