Morning Lee

I have NEVER had to deal with a mezzanine extension!!

However, most of what you are asking should have been considered by the procurement and design team(s) to meet requirements of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015.

NOTE! - I have assumed that this project is probably NOT notifiable.

But just because it's not notifiable doesn't mean that nothing else in CDM applies.

It's extremely unlikely that this project could be done by a single contractor even if only because the main contractor doing the structural erection is unlikely to be competent for the M&E works (new hard wired smoke detectors etc).

So, with or without CDM, a client duty to select a suitable contractor - preferably without excessive bureaucracy. I would defer to the guidance in the Approved Code of Practice L144 that supported CDM 2007, rather than what it says in L153 which is not particularly helpful in terms of practical steps. You should be  able to download L144 from the HSENI website.

On the assumption thata there will be more than one contractor, client appointment of a Principal Designer (could possibly be your organisation as Client) and Principal Contractor.

Pre Construction Information to be provided to contractor or tenderers.

Then a Construction Phase Plan (prepared by the Principal Contractor), which you as client should be checking before construction work starts.

AND perhaps just as important as anything else a Health and Safety File (or an amendment to existing HSF for the site) to inform about H&S issues for future "construction work"

+ outside CDM (to an extent) but possibly cross-referenced to the HSF, the all important Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Manuals.

Various of the above help to inform your updated fire risk assessment.

Good luck, Peter

Originally Posted by: peter gotch

So, with or without CDM, a client duty to select a suitable contractor - preferably without excessive bureaucracy. I would defer to the guidance in the Approved Code of Practice L144 that supported CDM 2007, rather than what it says in L153 which is not particularly helpful in terms of practical steps. You should be  able to download L144 from the HSENI website.

I note that's a withdrawn ACOP to a repealed piece of legislation. I agree there are elements of good practice within the guidance, for someone that doesn't already know the detail, I'm not sure how they'd pick out what is still good practice and what is now no longer applicable.

For the OP, and elaborating on what Peter has said: L144 included the ACOP to the previous version of CDM regs, but the latest version of CDM regs has significant changes, so while it can give you a structure to a competence assessment process, you will need to check that what you read in it aligns with the current regs.

Complementing L153 is the CITB guidance: https://www.citb.co.uk/a...5/cdm-regulations/  This isn't a HSE publication, but it is endorsed by HSE - it has their logo on the cover.  Unfortunately, it doesn't say much about competence, only that the client needs to appoint competent suppliers (though it avoids using the C-word - that was definitely an obscenity when CDM2015 was being prepared) and a reference to PAS91 and SSIP.

Lee - as achrn says the decision was made with CDM 2015 to avoid the "C" word.

CDM 1994 was followed by enormous bureaucracy. I remember one major client whose individual project managers each thought they knew best so every prequalfication questionnaire that came from the client had some new variant - it was enormously frustrating.

So, L144 supporting CDM 2007 tried to influence clients (and their advisers) into a more pragmatic approach to assessing competence at both organisational and individual levels.

CDM 2015 instead demands "skills, knowledge and experience" for organisation and individual. Now in my simplistic book SKE = C.

Which is why we continued to apply exactly the same process under CDM 2015 to assessing SKE as we had before to the assessment of C.

L153 has been described as "lite" - political pressure to make compliance look as easy as possible, with the result being that the guidance is far less helpful than that in L144.

Ironically, I attended a webinar yesterday where the speaker advocated not the two Stage Competence assessment recommended by L144, but a three Stage process, where the third stage involves checking the HSE prosecutions database - which in my view is next to useless in terms of illustrating competence or lack of competence!!

I could write many words to explain why the HSE prosecutions database is not helpful in this.

Edited by user 19 May 2022 14:18:25(UTC)  | Reason: A former HSE Inspector should be able to type PROSECUTION without a typo

Brian - just one aspect of the Forums that could easily be improved!

It doesn't bother me when other people put in typos, but my English master at school was a stickler.

I was once visiting a site where a new mezzanine was being installed.  It was almost completed and at the stage when electrics were being Final Fixed.  There were a few holes in the floor where panels had been removed and nothing to prevent falls into the holes.

I was standing on the mezzanine discussing this with the Contracts Manager and asking him about his fall prevention methods and emergency lighting when the lights went out.  It was as black as black can be and I became scared to move because of all the holes.

Once the lights came back on I was relieved and the Contracts Manager had received a valuable example first hand of what I was talking about.

Sorry I was going to add Fall Prevention and Emergency Lighting during theworks are essential.