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It appears the role is going along with many whom have specialized in this area. What do you think the new title will be if indeed there is one.
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Most still believe it's a Planning Supervisor don't they - let alone a CDM-C!
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Rank: Super forum user
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According to the Association for Project Safety Digest (received to-day) the CDMC duties will transfer to the "Principal Designer" (New HSE term).
They tried this route when the 1994 Regulations came out: it didn't work. Designers wanted little / nothing to do with health and safety.
In these penny pinching times I have listened to a number of designers claiming that they could easily do the CDMC job ("fill in an F10, make a list of all of the usual construction hazards and get the contractor to compile the health and safety file!"). These new proposals are a potential recipe for disaster.
IOSH are strangely quiet on the proposed changes.
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I think you are spot on the Designer is going to get the job and I suspect IOSH havent waded in as they arent the major player in CDM. The APS are worried and have linked up with the IIRSM and their CEO is retiring.
Farewell CDMC bonjorno FFI; I see a similarity between the virtual abolition of Traffic Police and the rise of the GATSO.
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So now the poor PC is going to be bounced into doing everything - probably without payment and no contract clauses to recover costs
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Rank: Super forum user 
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The parent Directive 92/57/EEC makes reference to: "coordinators for safety and health matters at the project preparations stage and execution stage."
The Directive terms a "project supervisor" as having overall responsibility for the design.
Talk of a new "principal designer" duty holder is wholly at odds with previous reports that the Directive is to be directly translated into UK law?
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Rank: Super forum user
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Again there has been no mention/inclusion of the regulation 7 person and try as I might over the years nobody in authority has listened when I proposed on many an occasion that the clients regulation 7 person / a project specific regulation 7 person should be involved [noting the requirements of MHSW] as irrespective of it being a designer, PS,or CDMC nobody actually advises the client in the way a R7 person can as only a R& person is the clients servant so looks after the client nor compliance monitors on behalf of the client in day to day construction areas hence the CDM regs are not moving forward
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Rank: Super forum user
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You are spot on there, Bob. In my current workplace it has been a rarity for any CDMC or Planning Supervisor to liaise with me.
Yet our workplace poses more danger to the Contractor's personnel than the reverse, and they cannot even imagine what their methods of work might potentially do to both of us. A CDMC, in my experience, has limited understanding of this aspect of Construction work in an existing workplace.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I will not mourn the passing of the CDM - C. If ever there was a role created that produced little of substance then this is it.
I wonder what will become of the APS when their CDM-Cs are redundant?
Jon
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The parent Directive 92/57/EEC makes reference to: "coordinators for safety and health matters at the project preparations stage and execution stage."
When our Italian plant was having a power station built on their manufacturing site they took their assistant safety officer out of his daily role and seconded him to the project for the duration. They did this to comply with the directive and because they thought it was a sound idea.
Most workplaces have a safety officer but a new construction site/project does not. The position has to be created, that was my understanding of the requirement of the directive.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I agree with redken about construction sites needing a 'safety officer' or rather "access and use of a competent person for safety advice".
I have acted as CDM-C for several small/medium-sized building sites that needed a CDM-C because of duration. After a couple of initial meetings the pre-construction plan is agreed - this has always included getting:
- the welfare facilities on site before work starts - so many sites would start digging trenches etc without getting the portakabins and loos in place first
- running a system of competency checks on the sub-contractors
- ensuring LOLER exams on lifting machines
- ensuring documented scaffold handover, and weekly scaffold inspections
- etc etc things many small builders/clients just wouldn't/don't think of immediately
- AND having access and use of a competent person for safety advice
So I start off as "CDM-C" and then successfully talk myself into being their 'safety person' doing regular site inspections, Toolbox Talks and doing weekly scaffold inspections, and usually the client is grateful that they have me doing all this.
So whatever happens to the CDM-C role any changes to CDM should emphasise to the small/medium projects the importance of use of a competent person for safety advice by REQUIRING it in some formal role, not the designer, not the PC.
JohnW
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Rank: Super forum user
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Having worked as a CDMC since the inception of the 2007 Regulations and spent 25 years working in construction health and safety I can assure you that a good CDMC adds much more value to a project than his fee commands.
If there are any justifiable reasons for the construction industry feeling that CDMCs are a waste of money it is the following.
Failure of designers to advise Clients of their duty to appoint a CDMC before detailed design works commence.
Client appointment of CDMC when projects have allready received planning permissionn and it is prohibitively expensive to change the design.
CDMCs with health and safety background but no construction experience.
CDMCs with construction background but no health and safety experience.
Profit margins in the construction industry being driven down in the last 7 years to such an extent that Clients will appoint the cheapest possible consultant to fill CDMC dutyholder role. This forces many well qualified and experienced CDMCs to reduce their fees (now roughly a third of what they were 6 years ago) resulting in them to have to take on more work to be able to make a reasonable living. End result is they cannot give individual projects the attention they demand. (and please do not mention not accepting an appointment unless you can suitably resource it because the reality is either keep up the profits or get made redundant)
And if the HSE thinks for one minute that a lead designer can or will suitably fulfill the duties of a CDMC or any kind of H&S role then these new regulations are doomed from the start because they certainly havn`t manged it in the last 20 years.
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I completely agree with paulw71 and some of the other posters and these changes to CDM are more examples of the way that law and best practice is being diluted!!!
It will not be long before we are back in the 60's when I started!
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Rank: Super forum user 
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paulw71 wrote:
CDMCs with health and safety background but no construction experience.
Speaking as a designer, this is the biggest failing in CDM-Cs. A CMD-C that doesn't have decent construction experience rarely adds anything.
paulw71 wrote:
This forces many well qualified and experienced CDMCs to reduce their fees (now roughly a third of what they were 6 years ago) resulting in them to have to take on more work to be able to make a reasonable living. End result is they cannot give individual projects the attention they demand. (and please do not mention not accepting an appointment unless you can suitably resource it because the reality is either keep up the profits or get made redundant)
And if the HSE thinks for one minute that a lead designer can or will suitably fulfill the duties of a CDMC or any kind of H&S role then these new regulations are doomed from the start because they certainly havn`t manged it in the last 20 years.
Although we could do teh role (and have done teh role in teh past). Corporately we now resist doing teh role as hard as we possibly can, because we can't do teh role properly for market rate. That is, if we take teh role on, we do it right, and we make a loss on it. We will do that, but only in vanishingly rare situations (where a client insists, and we can recover teh loss on CDM-C elsewhere in the project) and going into it with our eyes open. More often, if teh client insists we take on the role, we subcontract it.
I think it's unreasonable to imply that no design considered the CDM-C role as a failing when the CDM-C role is defined as the role of the CDM-C not the designer.
There certainly are designers that have been considering the issue of safety in their designs - historically we made our niche working directly for contractors and considering how it is built has always been part of our ethos - the company was doing 'd&b' since before anyone labelled it d&b (we called it 'contractor alternatives' then). Making it quick and easy to build has always been part of our thinking - and easy generally (though admittedly not always) means safe. Most of the stuff now regarded as required by CDM we were doing before just to make the contractor's (our client) life easier - things like calculating lift weights and designing in lifting lugs, and telling them where the CoG is, and specifying erection sequences where not obvious, identifying propping requirements and so on.
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Rank: Super forum user
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achrn
I agree. There are designers out there who do consider these matters and do fulfill their duties under the regs. My point is that the reason that CDMCs in general have developed a reputation as a waste of money or an unneccessary expense is really through no fault of their own.
If appointed in good time, IE at an early design stage, they can and should add value. Reality is they seldom are. When I am appointed I find the bulk of physical design work is in place and when I raise even the most basic of issues such as roof access, roof parapet walls or edge protection, access for plant maintenance and replacement then I am met with the response that this is now to expensive to change.
If all parties followed the requirements of the regulations (especially timing of appointments) then I dont think there would have been an issue.
I would also say that a lot of the issues with CDM 2007 on large/medium sized construction projects stemmed from a failure on the part of the HSE to fully grasp the way construction projects and contracts are procured and the fact that at the start of design works there is no formal Client (in the sense of a Client for the end built product). As such it became easy for developers and designers to ignore matters they should have been considering.
Also when it came to the matter of Clients duties to provide pre construction information about the site, as many new build Clients do not even own the site where development will take place and will only purchase the land and enter into contract when design is complete and planning has been granted. For tax purposes they will transfer the duty to procure relevant surveys onto the PC, again rendering that side of the CDMC duty irrellevant. Again not the CDMC`s fault.
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