For what it's worth, in my humble opinion the installation should have been designed with access for maintenance in mind. It seems like a failure in the initial design/CDM stage etc. The engineers and designers are at fault and this may well be a 'latent defect'. Rob

CDM may or may not have been referenced in the design and construction of that installation, but I'd personally avoid unecessarily irking your client or inflaming a difficult situation by pointing him at various regulatory requirements. You have valid commercial reasons for not wanting to do this work (and you're presumably not operating under any warranty condition) - why not just stick with that?

My employer is the manufacturer (of the pump). Our direct client is the distributor who we supplied the pump to. The end-user has now claimed for a warranty repair through the distributor who in turn have asked us to attend site to conduct the repair. The site falls under the auspices of the local authority. With regard to many of the specific questions asked in response to my original post I'm afraid that I don't have answers for them. Our first attendance to site was last week, we were never engaged to commission these pumps - must have been commissioned by others - so we had no sight of the site (!!) when it was in the 'build' phase. We've just dropped onto it now that it has been fully handed over (perhaps several months ago for all I know) and is a working crematorium. I take the point that someone will have 'signed off' on the build. Had we commissioned this pump-set then I hope that our engineer would have pointed out at that time that future maintenance on the pump-set would be at best problematic and at worst impossible. As it is we didn't commission so had no opportunity to advise of our concerns until tasked to carry out a repair.........someone 'signed it off' but I doubt that they will/would be able to offer any input as to how this set is maintainable in its current position. I'm certainly not trying to unnecessarily antagonise an already awkward situation. End-user is 'kicking off' at the distributor because our engineers 'walked away'. I'm just looking for 'chapter and verse' so that I can give the background to the distributor to justify our actions and ensure that any anger is directed back down the chain to where the original failings might have been - either design or construction. My current stance is to advise that we will not attempt to repair the pump in its current position. If the end-user wants to engage others to demount the pump-set and deliver it to ground level then we'll happily reattend to replace mechanical seal(s) so that others can replace the pump-set into its lofty perch afterwards. Thanks for the pointers and input, you've mostly confirmed my suspicions that CDM is the relevant regulation at play and it's the one to reference when attempting to make the distributor understand that someone really is supposed to consider the H&S of maintainers when designing and building these installations.

Section 6 HASAWA is actually your start point as CDM merely reinforces the act. The client actually needs to bring the installing contractor back to site, or the PC if it was a Notifiable job. Your duty extends to a warranty on the equipment when properly installed, maintained and used. You also need evidence of the commissioning engineers comissioning records to ensure they match your requirements. Contractor designed procedures are not that unknown. Bob