Hello everyone. It's been a while since I've had any direct dealings with the CDM regs and having recently been asked a question, I thought it might be sensible to check my understanding before giving advice back. One of the organisations I work for wants to refurbish a simple storage unit on a light industrial estate. This will involve three stages - firstly taking out the existing racking system (that includes an interesting mezzanine floor arrangement), then renovating the electrical installation and fire alarms, before finally reinstating the racking system in a more useful configuration. Additionally, there will be a bit of renovation to the small office section at the front of the building, probably involving moving a couple of the partition walls, upgrading data services and repainting/carpeting. These will all be run in series, i.e. one after another with no overlap of activities. Each one of these stages by themselves fall beneath the notifiable threshold in terms of hours worked or duration of project, but when put together they go over the 500 hours worked, but not by much. My understanding is that this activity would fall under the definition of construction, and that it wouldn't really be in the spirit of the law to consider each of these stages as a separate project, particularly given that there will be minimal time between each stage - although any thoughts on this would be welcome. The greater questions for me are about how to advise them to meet the requirements of the law whilst not burdening themselves with a lot of extra effort to meet the requirements of CDM. Firstly, they have a competent and sensible person who is happy to oversee the project, with a NEBOSH certificate, and it might seem sensible to suggest that this person could act as CDM Coordinator as well as project manager. By default, he would also be the designer as he is making all the decisions as to layout etc etc. But, is this possible, given that he is directly employed by the client? Secondly, there will never be more than one contractor on site at any one time (given the staged nature of the works) so it seems a bit odd to appoint one of them to be principal contractor particularly when the person overseeing the total activity is happy to manage this side of things (as would be possible for a non-notifiable project, if my understanding of the regs is right?) and the contractors are quite specialised in their own areas of activity. Is there a way that any one knows of to deal with this situation - i.e. one where technically the project is (only just) notifiable and the roles of CDM Coordinator and Principal Contractor need to be fulfilled, but everything kept commensurate with the relatively low levels of risk and complexity? Many thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!

Euan, If the project manager demonstrates a satisfactory level of competency in the nature of this construction, with an understanding and acceptance of the duties purported under the 2007 Regulations to undertake the roles of CDM Coordinator and Principal Contractor, then he could act as both. He will obviously need to fully meet the statutory requirements for both roles. However, its important to advise the Client that they need to ensure that the project is adequately resourced in terms of health and safety, so consideration will need to be made of the project manager's workload and support. Cheers.

Euan Just a bit of clarification A CDMC and Notification are required if the project runs for thirty days or more and over 500 Person days - you mentioned 500 hours