Service
The health and safety file
The file the building keeps: what this project has to tell the next one, compiled as the works run and handed over at practical completion.
Short answer
A health and safety file is the record of what a completed project leaves behind that a future project needs to know about. It is required on projects with more than one contractor, the principal designer prepares it under regulation 12(5), and it goes to the client at the end for them to keep and pass on. It should be proportionate: enough for the likely risks to be identified and addressed, and no more.
What the file is for
Everything in the file is there to answer one question: what would somebody working on this building in ten years need to know that they could not work out by looking at it. Not what happened during the build. What is left behind.
HSE guidance suggests considering a brief description of the work carried out, any hazards that were not eliminated and how they were addressed, key structural principles and safe working loads, hazardous materials used, information about removing installed plant, health and safety information about cleaning and maintaining the structure, the nature and location of significant services including buried ones, and as built drawings of the building and its plant.
What that means on a house extension
Short. A description of the work, the steel schedule and where the loads now go, the positions of anything buried or concealed that was not there before, the asbestos position including anything found and what was done with it, the residual risks that survived the design, and the drawings and certificates. On a straightforward extension that is a handful of pages and a set of drawings, not a ring binder.
The test worth applying. If a builder opening this file before knocking a wall down in 2036 would not act differently for having read a page, that page is not doing anything.
How ClearCDM compiles it
Where the appointment runs through to completion, the file is built as the project runs rather than assembled in a panic at the end. Designers' residual risk information goes in as it arrives, the contractor's information comes in through the notification page package by package, and the file is issued to the client at practical completion as a single PDF.
Where the appointment ends at start on site, the file position at that point is recorded in the start on site handover record and the file passes on with it, as regulation 12(8) requires.
Common questions
Does every project need a health and safety file?
No. The file is only required for projects involving more than one contractor. On a single contractor project there is no file duty, although anything useful about the building is still worth keeping.
Who prepares it?
The principal designer, under regulation 12(5). If the principal designer's appointment ends before the project does, regulation 12(8) requires them to pass the file to the principal contractor, who then carries it to the end.
What should not go in it?
HSE guidance is unusually direct about this: not the pre-construction information, not the construction phase plan, not contracts, not method statements. The file is for the next project, so anything that will not help someone plan future work is clutter that hides what matters.
How long do I keep it?
For as long as it is relevant, which HSE guidance describes as normally the lifetime of the building. If you sell, it goes to the buyer, with an explanation of what it is for.
Sources
- CDM 2015, regulation 12: construction phase plan and health and safety file legislation.gov.uk
- Managing health and safety in construction, L153, Appendix 4 HSE guidance on the Regulations
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The file is part of the appointment where we are retained through to completion. Price the whole thing in about two minutes.
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