Our company acts as the Principal Contractor, the designer, the CDM-C and the construction company on a pharmaceutical site. The work we do involves engineering maintenance and minor/medium projects, some of which are notifiable to the HSE under the CDM regulations. My question relates to CDM inductions. Up to 90% of the work on site is carried out by us or our Alliance partner, 5% carried out by regular term contractors and finally 5% by other contractors. Currently we have 8 projects ongoing that are Notifaiable, this means that along with our company inductions and the clients site induction we have 8 CDM inductions to complete for all team members wishing to work on a particular project. The problem we have with this is that one day our employee may be working on a particular area of plant undertaking maintenance activities, then another day we will say you can’t work there until you have completed the Project induction. This all seems a bit of a waste of time when the men are very experienced on site (up to 20 years), they are permanently on site. They repeat the client’s induction every 1-3 years, etc. Does anyone have any thoughts on what they would do in this situation? I don’t want to avoid inductions, but I don’t want to do them just to tick a box. Do you think we could prove adequate site knowledge using the existing client’s induction and team briefs without the need to induct for every specific project? The only problem is not sharing information as the location of the F10, an outline of the specific project, etc. However when you are trying to induct a tradesman to an area he has worked in for the last 10 years and all he is going to do is the same job he has done for the last 10 years (i.e. erect scaffold) he is not always going to remember the specifics as tomorrow he will be on another CDM project. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I mainly agree with Bob as you are overdoing your inductions somewhat. The important points are the basic safety arrangements, (fire, first aid, means of escape etc.etc) the rest are about the work and the workplace, and any site rules. You have to treat your workers with some respect for them knowing their work and having some common sense. Without further information or seeing the sites for myself can't really say more, apart from I arrange inductions for notifiable sites just the same as non notifiable and they are all around the 20 minute mark. No fancy videos or power points just verbal instructions with a hand out and signatures received.

Thank you for all of your thoughts. I understand that inductions are not only for Notifiable projects; however we cover inductions for the site in the usual manor (i.e. company inductions and site inductions) but these inductions don’t mention things such as project specific information, the location of the F10, etc, so I thought I should be detailing this information separately. We have reduced the size of the induction to a minimum however keeping track of who is inducted on each project area can get difficult to monitor because the only way is to get the name of the person and track it back to a signature sheet. For me this is no benefit, the benefit comes from the workers being safe and understanding their surroundings and hazards associated with the work. I think I will stream line the inductions to one CDM style induction per person, then use the morning brief to discuss project specific information. Thanks again for your thoughts.

cahill33411 I am a bit worried by your use of the term CDM sites. All construction sites are CDM sites so are you actually meaning Notifiable sites? Bob