I will try to answer your lengthy (bite size chunks preferred) questions. As the client and where more than one contractor (see reg 5. below) a PC and PD needs to be appointed, otherwise the duties fall to the client. Not sure about question 2, but I suspect the first (bankrupt) contractor would be irrelevant and you would only have one contractor if a new one was appointed. If you appoint one contractor and as soon as he brings in a sub-contractor then 'more than one contractor' principle would apply (see reg 2. below). Question 4 and 5 as above, unless you as the client accept the role of either PC or PD. 5.—(1) Where there is more than one contractor, or if it is reasonably foreseeable that more than one contractor will be working on a project at any time, the client must appoint in writing— (a) a designer with control over the pre-construction phase as principal designer; and . (b) a contractor as principal contractor. 2.—(1) In these Regulations— “contractor” means any person (including a non-domestic client) who, in the course or furtherance of a business, carries out, manages or controls construction work;

I mean - how do we demonstrate we have evaluated the PC to ensure they have the required skills etc.

I think you are a client in all this. That seems to be the implication, and that's what I'm assuming. I agree with RayRap. Note that reg 5 is more than one contractor AT ANY TIME, and if you had one contractor who goes bust they won't be working when the second one is appointed, so I don't think you would need PC and PD. You definitely do need a PC and PD if you appoint a contractor and they appoint a subcontractor - it's about how many are working, not who appoints them. How to assess competency (but without mention the word) is less clearly defined in the new regs because the HSE wants to discourage the competency-assessment industry, which has become principally about making paperwork and profit, not ensuring safety. Have you seen INDG411? It doesn't answer your question, but you probably need to read it so you know about it - http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg411.pdf Slightly more useful overall is the CITB guidance - http://www.citb.co.uk/he.../cdm-guidance-documents/ However, with respect to competence it basically says use PAS91 (a free download from BSI) or use an SSIP member, and the SSIP members are all the competence-assessment-industry that we didn't like anyway. If you want to do competence assessment yourself, SSIP publish the core criteria by which members are supposed to judge competence. It is buried in an appendix to http://www.ssip.org.uk/docs/TermsOfReference.pdf and I suggest you look at the table in Appendix 7, which identifies 'standard to be achieved' and 'Examples of the evidence that you could use to demonstrate you meet the required standard'. You could pick out the things that are relevant to PD / PC appointments.

You need to consider this from first principles. The reason for additional appointments and duties (in CDM and TMCSD) is to ensure effective cooperation, coordination and communication of risk. If it is foreseeable that there will be more than one contractor (i.e. more than one contracting employer/organisation) concurrently on site, then the PD and PC appointments kick -in. It doesn't matter what direct appointment the Client makes, it's about what is foreseeable. There is a degree of arbitrariness to the Regulations. The same argument (of increased risk) could equally apply if there were more than one Designer on the Project - but that's not what the Directive says.