Pre-construction information
What information should a designer provide to the principal designer?
Short answer
Two things. The risks your design creates that you could not eliminate, with enough explanation for somebody else to manage them, under regulation 9(3). And sufficient information about the design, construction and maintenance of the structure for the client, the other designers and the contractors to carry out their own duties, under regulation 9(4). In practice, on a small project, that is your drawings plus a short note of what is difficult about building them.
What it actually looks like
Not a document written for the principal designer. Your existing drawings, specification and risk register, plus answers to a few specific questions. The useful ones are:
- What is being removed or opened up, and what is holding the building up while that happens.
- Anything that has to be done in a particular order for the building to stay safe.
- Loads, temporary support requirements and any assumed sequence in the structural design.
- Work at height that the design creates and cannot remove: roof levels, openings, edges, fragile surfaces.
- Anything about the existing building your survey turned up: materials, condition, hidden services.
- Anything about maintaining or cleaning the finished building that will be awkward: inaccessible glazing, plant at height, roof access.
- Anything the design assumes about the site that the contractor needs to know: access widths, ground conditions, neighbouring structures.
What is not worth sending
Generic risk assessments. Standard practice notes about hazards common to all construction. Whole document sets sent as a precaution. All three make the pre-construction information longer and less likely to be read, which is the opposite of what HSE guidance asks for when it says the information should be clear, concise and easily understandable.
A useful test. Would a competent builder pricing this job be surprised by it, or plan differently for knowing it? If not, it probably belongs in the drawings rather than in the risk information.
Residual risk, not every risk
Regulation 9 asks you to eliminate what you reasonably can first, then reduce or control what is left, and to provide information about what remains. The information duty is about the residue, not about everything you thought of.
A good residual risk note usually reads like: this remains, this is why it could not be designed out, and this is what somebody needs to do about it. Three lines. It is far more useful than a matrix.
How ClearCDM asks for it
One short online form per designer, per project, around ten minutes. It asks in plain terms for the risks the design leaves and lets you attach whatever you already hold rather than retyping it. We take it from there: it goes into the pre-construction information and, where relevant, into the health and safety file.
Sources
- CDM 2015, regulation 9: duties of designers legislation.gov.uk
- CDM 2015, regulation 11: duties of a principal designer legislation.gov.uk
- Managing health and safety in construction, L153 HSE guidance on the Regulations
- HSE: designers, roles and responsibilities hse.gov.uk
Hand us the CDM principal designer role
You keep the design appointment. Build your client's quote in about two minutes and send them the link to check and send on, so the appointment is theirs and the admin is not yours.
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