How it works
How the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 run through your project: what happens at each step, who does what, and what you receive. The same five steps are on one page in the process map, which is yours to download and share.
01Appointment and your details
The appointment pack confirms ClearCDM as your CDM principal designer and sets out the service. You accept it by completing and signing the short online form in your invitation email; there is nothing to print or post. The form also collects what you know about the property, takes around ten minutes, and works on a phone. Work should not begin on site before your acceptance is in place.
You
Read the appointment pack. Complete and sign the short online form, around ten minutes; your signature on it is your acceptance.
Tell us who is designing and, if already chosen, who is building.
ClearCDM, your principal designer
We set the project up, issue the appointment pack and send your personal form link.
Appointment pack
Your designers and contractor
Nothing needed yet.
02Gathering the information
We visit the site and record it, and each of your designers receives a short online form asking for their design risk information in whatever format they already have it, usually their own drawings or risk register. You send us anything you hold about the property. Everything lands in one project record, and we hold it there rather than bombarding anyone with questions.
You
Send anything you hold about the property: surveys, drawings, old reports.
Arrange access for our site visit.
ClearCDM, your principal designer
We visit and record the site, send each designer a short online form, and organise everything into one project record.
Your designers and contractor
Designers complete their form, around ten minutes, and share their drawings and risk information as they are.
03The pre-construction information pack
The regulations ask for the project's health and safety information to be collected and passed to whoever builds, so they can plan and price safe work. We write this as the pre-construction information pack: the site, its risks, the designers' risk information, and the arrangements for the health and safety file. The information register issued with it shows anything still awaited and who provides it.
You
Review the pack, and share it with anyone quoting for the works.
ClearCDM, your principal designer
We write and issue the pack, and keep the information register up to date as information arrives.
PCI packInformation register
Your designers and contractor
Everyone quoting or building uses the pack to plan and price the works safely.
04Before work starts
Your contractor completes their own short form and prepares the construction phase plan, which is their legal document for running the site safely. A small number of gates must be in place before work starts, and the start on site handover record confirms the position on each of them plainly. We confirm the information position; we do not approve the contractor's methods, which stay the contractor's responsibility.
You
Appoint your contractor in writing.
Work must not start until the gates below are met.
ClearCDM, your principal designer
We send the contractor a short online form, record the return, and confirm the position to you at handover.
Start on site handover record
Your designers and contractor
The contractor returns their form, prepares the construction phase plan and sets up site welfare.
Before work can start on site. The law requires the principal contractor appointed in writing where more than one contractor is involved, a construction phase plan in existence, and welfare facilities in place; where the project qualifies, the F10 notice must be submitted to HSE. Alongside those, ClearCDM's pre start checks confirm the asbestos position for buildings of asbestos age. We track all of it on the information register and tell you plainly where each one stands.
05During and after the works
Where our appointment continues through the construction phase, design changes are notified to us before they are built, subcontractor designers are recorded package by package as scaffold, steelwork and similar are appointed, and the health and safety file is completed and issued to you at practical completion as a single PDF. Keep it with the property's papers and pass it to anyone doing future work on the building.
You
Tell us about any changes you instruct.
At the end, keep the health and safety file with the property's papers.
ClearCDM, your principal designer
Where we are retained through the works: design changes coordinated, subcontractor designers recorded package by package, and the file completed at the end.
Health and safety file
Your designers and contractor
The contractor runs the site under their plan, and notifies design changes and file information through our notification page or by email.
What you receive
- The appointment pack.
- The pre-construction information pack.
- The information register, kept up to date as information arrives.
- The start on site handover record.
- Where we continue through the works, the health and safety file at practical completion as a single PDF.
Two ways we may be appointed
Some appointments conclude at start on site, with the handover record closing our involvement; others continue through the construction phase to the handover of the health and safety file. The quote offers the choice as two routes. To start on site suits projects where there will be no ongoing design work while the project is under construction, or where the contractor or another principal designer will take on the role. Through to completion, which suits most projects, keeps us appointed while the works run, because design commonly carries on after start: structural details, contractor designed elements, substitutions. Your appointment document sets out which applies, and either way the steps above read the same.
Download
Get your price now
Use the instant quote tool for an instant quote in about two minutes, or email mail@clearcdm.co.uk with the site address and a one line description of the works. Either way, we check and confirm every quote, normally within one working day.