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Marlize  
#1 Posted : 03 May 2024 09:42:09(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
Marlize

As the Principal Contractor (PC) overseeing safety on a construction site, we bear responsibility for ensuring health and safety compliance under CDM. When the client directly employs the civils contractor, and they repeatedly fail to adhere to site rules, how should we address this frustrating issue? With dangerous non-compliance persisting for the fourth time, we're struggling to effectively manage it. I'm considering recommending a temporary halt of work.  What do you think?

peter gotch  
#2 Posted : 03 May 2024 14:44:59(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Hi Marlize

Tricky but I suggest that you have a team meeting to discuss a number of variables  including:

1. What the Contract says? It might set out your powers as PC over any supply chain organisations with whom you have no direct contractual link + define your site boundaries.

2. Whether the Civils Contractor is on a site within your site, or whether THEIR site might be deemed to be separate to YOUR site?

3. Quite how bad the Civils Contractor's misdeeds are? Are these issues of interpretation of what is or is not reasonably practicable or matters where the standards are in effect set in stone? 

As example, suppose the Civils Contractor has dug a trench 1.5m deep and 4m long and has put in "hit and miss" supports. Your company procedures might state full shuttering but the Civils Contractor might have put in the support to a Temporary Works design by someone competent to do the TWD and it might be legally OK - hence probably NOT prudent for you as PC to jump up and down too much.

BUT!!! Just because if just doesn't "look right" doesn't mean that there is ACTUALLY anything wrong, though your gut feeling is USUALLY probably right.

I was walking along a street in Stornoway one evening when I saw a wooden scaffold across the road. Initial instinct was "that's not right". But then I thought "they have been building wooden scaffolds for millennia and used to make travelling ones to storm castles. So it must be possible to erect an entirely legal wooden scaffold."

....and when I took that deep breath and looked at it again, I couldn't see anything whatsoever to get upset about.

Conversely, if their dump trucks are traversing over your pedestrian routes with no traffic management or similar, then you are probably on solid ground to make a big fuss.

4. What challenge to make of the Client's actions? In terms of management of the CDM "project" or "projects", the Client should be setting the tone!

thanks 1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
mike350 on 07/05/2024(UTC)
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