Abbey CCL as the CDM Coordinator.
Clients have a number of legal duties under CDM 2007 upon which we can advise and assist.
ACCL are on the Association for Project Safety's register of CDM Coordinators, and may act as Competent Person or CDM Coordinator as required.
Construction Health and Safety relies heavily on large amounts of common sense, good training and knowledge, an awareness of the hazards, and a wide appreciation of all the issues. The ACCL team possesses these qualities. Safety is related not to the amount of paper generated, but to the relevance and content.
We add value by promoting positive mental attitudes towards safety and welfare, assisting Clients to understand and perform their important roles of goal setting and information provision, working with Designers and Contractors to identify safety issues and provide health and safety advice to the whole team when needed. The outcome is safer and more efficient sites.
In many respects the client's most difficult duty is that of ensuring the most current information is available to all who require it. To assist Clients comply with the stipulations of the new regulations we now offer the Abbey CDM Database to ensure proper provision of information to all parties.
Using the database, we can collate all the relevant information from all parties, and provide access to it via the internet so that Clients, Contractors, and Designers all have access to the most up to date information, when they require it, on demand.
The Construction (Design and Management) Regualtions 2007.
Following a European Directive the Construction (Design and Management) (CDM) Regulations were enacted in 1994 to improve safety in the construction industry by addressing the causes of accidents at design, construction, maintenance, use, and demolition stages.
There have been significant improvements in safety. Despite this, there were still 77 deaths in the Construction Industry; representing 32% of all workers killed at work during 2006/07 (Source: www.hse.gov.uk). The same report found that the rate of injury for construction workers was 60% higher than the average for workers in all industries.
The CDM Regulations 2007 refined the regulations to build further on their success.
Changes to Client Responsibilities From 1994 to 2007.
Made under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 The Regulations aim to provide a safe place of work and safe working methods by ensuring proper assessments are carried out at all stages to reduce or eliminate risks, and that Designers and Contractors are competent and properly resourced.
Under the regulations Clients must appoint a CDM Coordinator and a Principle Contractor, from project inception, for all commercial building contracts that will last for more than 30 days, and also in some other circumstances.
This is the only statutory appointment in construction.
The 2007 CDM Regulations now apply to all building work of any scale that meet the criteria of the regulations meaning many previously exempt projects fall within their scope including maintenance, repair and small fit-out contracts.
Also, Clients are made responsible for setting the safety agenda. On non-notifiable works, Clients can appoint a Competent Person to assist with this.
Issues that must be properly dealt with range from information provision, checking the competence and resources of everyone employed, not allowing work to progress until certain actions are complete.
