Posted By Peter MacDonald
OK. this is a further question relating to my last post about CDM.

My company has been employed as the principle contractor to carry out demolition work. At the time of bidding we invisaged using sub-contractors A,B and C. Shortly after demolition began the client employed a seperate contractor to strip out some reusable items from the areas to be demolished. It is a large site and the client let us sort out between us where they could work so there was no interference between each others work. We signed their four men off on a daily permit so we could count them in and out (we were not asked too but our site supervisor felt it was a useful check). We were not consulted by the client on the nature of their works and were not specifically charged with managing their works, providing facilities or monitoring progress. The new contractor has a specialist job of which we have no specialist knowledge. I note that in the CDM APOC 1994, there can only be one Principal Contractor on a project at any one time although their can be more than one project on site if the packages of work are independent and do not rely upon one another for their viability or completion. My question is this. If the client asked only to communicate our movements to each other,and we were not instructed to make changes to our arrangements in welfare and management systems to accomodate them, and were given no specific info on their duties, are they a seperate project on the same site, and ARE WE THE PC. If we are, have we been short changed by the client.

If you're new to this thread, no-one (including myself) gave this arrangement a second thought until the second contractor had an accident on site (completely unrelated to our activities).

Regards


Peter

Posted By john ridley
Whislt not an expert in CDM, what I have learned in my own limited way, is that the whole structure of CDM relies upon the relationship of the various bodies involved in the work and I hope the following may help you.

As the principle contractor, the site should be under your control and all activities on site should be under your direct control and part of your overall safety plan submission ahich should include the control of everyone eneytering the site. I will presume that this was agreed by the appointed planning supervisor and the client on agreement that you would be the principle contractor.

I work in the telecomms industry and we require that any of our employees who want to enter a site during the construction phase to work e.g. fit out telecomms aquipment, must first produce a safety plan to the principle contractor so that this can be integrated onto their overall safety plan. Part of that submission must obvioulsy include method statements and risk assessments.

It is vital that all safety arrangments and controls are cascaded as to do otherwise is increasing the risk and could lead to stoppage of all work on site until the authorities have investigated.

We usually tell our project managers to think of things that might hold up the project and they usually respond with late delivery or wrong material. We then enlighten them to the effect of a fatality, a fatal fire or some other such emergency and the resultant authority involvement in investigating the incident e.g. police as the coroners agents etc. That usually gets them on board, well for a while anyway.

I hope this helps Peter

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Peter
If they are within your work area then as long as you are the PC then you control them or alternatively the client can take the role from you and pass it to the other contractor. Whatever 1 Work Area = 1 PC and whatever the client wishes then it cannot be changed. The use of a permit is a start but did you receive and accept their proposed methods and did you adequately ensure the work area was safe and can you document this. I hope ultimately the accident was not tooo serious or there may be later difficulties if the questions cannot be answered positively.

Bob

Posted By Chris Uren
Peter

I still have a concern about the role of the Planning Supervisor in this. You should perhaps establish from the client what responsibilities the PS had with regard to advising and perhaps even writing the pre tender plan. You may find that the Client simply did not understand their responsibilities under CDM. This would not be unusual.

This CDM lark can be a minefield can't it.

Chris

Posted By Martyn Hendrie
Unfortunately the CDM regulations do not require the client to clearly define in writing what "the project" consists of.

If I were in your position I would try and establish whether or not the client considers there to be one or two projects.

If he is treating the current arrangement as one project you have some serious commercial matters to discuss and need to take an active interest in managing safety of all on site.

If he is treating it as two projects (hopefully clarified in writing)you have co-ordination issues to discuss with the other contractor. (MHS@W Regs)

The client would than have to defend his decision to the HSE/courts were they to investigate the arrangements.

As it stands it seems that the client has put you between a rock and a hard place.