I'm sure the HSE do not want to be receiving hundreds of F10's for  projects that do not meet the thresholds, but have the HSE specifically stated this anywhere?

Looking on the 'F10 - Notification of construction project' page it's clear when they should be notified but they haven’t specifically said DO NOT issue if the project is not notifiable.

I realise this should be common sense, but I’m looking for a bit more back up to convience a client as I have already stated it should not be done, but the requests are continuing to be made!

Thanks

I am of the opinion that if HSE receive stuff they do not want because they it is not required they may be inclined to make a visit to the Client as it may seem not to be competent as required. ?

For some historical perspective F10 is far from a new product brought about by CDM.

Section 127(6) as qualified by S127(7) of the Factories Act 1961 (consolidating from 1937) required the notification by the CONTRACTOR of certain construction sites and additional legislation set out that this should be on the "prescribed form" - F10.

It was a piece of paper that would be typed on or completed by hand and sent to the local Principal Inspector.

At the top right hand corner there was the pre-printed code V PV NV.

So, when the F10 came in it landed on the Principal Inspector's desk and they put a ring round one of the options:

V = instruction to the relevant local Inspector to Visit.

PV = possible visit

NV - no visit - either the site was going to be of such short duration that it was not worth considering a planned inspection or the Principal Inspector was sufficiently confident in the Contractor that they would let them get on with the job without unannounced inspection UNLESS something cropped up to change that view.

Then those marked V or PV were photocopied and the copy of each such F10 would be passed to the relevant Inspector.

All the originals would be placed in the Contractor's file - documentary evidence of notification or the LACK of notification!

My boss for 4 years wasn't even too bothered if I didn't follow up the ones marked V - except when they related to the known poor performers.

He was much more interested in me keeping an eye on my patch and inspecting the sites which SHOULD have been notified but had NOT been. If a Contractor didn't know that they should notify or deliberately failed to do so, a very high probability that site standards would be poor.

+ many of the problems were on non-notifiable sites - so about keeping one's eyes open.

When the draft Regulations with the initial acronym CONDAM were being consulted on 30 years ago, it was mooted that HSE would apply a very similar approach to using the intelligence afforded by the extended information in F10.

So, now there would be a choice of V PV NV for each of the key duty holders - Client, Planning Supervisor, one or more Designers, and, usually, later the Principal Contractor.

At the time, HSE were very keen to emphasise that the time when there is most opportunity to eliminate hazards on site or at least to reduce the inherent reisks was at the very start of the project so HSE would be targeting some Clients and their Consultants - didn't really happen.

...and that laudible objective seems to have gone out of the window when HSE moved to a PREFERENCE for online notifications in 2007.

I attended an IOSH meeting that year where there was a presentation by a local HSE Inspector.

One of the QQ put to this Inspector was:

"What should be do if we don't know exactly when the work will start on site?"

"Just put in your best guess as to the month?"

My follow up was:

"What if we don't know the YEAR or even whether the project will ever make it to site - we've been working on the M74 completion project for at least 15 years and I still don't know whether it will be built".

"Well, I don't want to know about that. If it starts on site in 5 years time, I will have been moved into inspecting a different sector so I won't be around to see what is happening. So notify when you have a better idea of when construction will start."

This was precisely the sort of project that HSE had indicated 15 years previously that it intended to target at the early stages. 

Huge civil engineering project in an urban area with considerable levels of chromium and other contamination to be considered. Far too late if it had been left to the Contractor to cope with - we needed to design to mitigate the issues or face major claims if we had not written what needed to be managed into the Contract Specification. 

I trust that at a local level HSE still do use F10s to help inform which sites should receive attention (when the local Inspector has some time!), even if F10 does not appear to be informing HSE strategy when it comes to the front end duty holders.

Caboche

F10s didn't inform "overall strategy" in the 1980s.

As I said earlier:

"It was a piece of paper that would be typed on or completed by hand and sent to the local Principal Inspector.

At the top right hand corner there was the pre-printed code V PV NV.

So, when the F10 came in it landed on the Principal Inspector's desk and they put a ring round one of the options:....."

So, a very similar strategy to that you depict now: "F10s are generally used for local intelligence, and cover everything from major projects to Mrs Miggins' extension."

However, my key point was that when the expanded notification requirements came in with CDM 1994 on 31 March 1995, HSE had the chance to intervene much earlier in the planning phase of a project and has consistently failed to do so.

If you are right that "there is a HSE project for interventions on major projects which is instigated at design stage and has a nominated inspector per project" time will tell as to whether this is a welcome intervention better 28 years late than never, or whether it fizzles out like the promises made when CDM first landed.

Having worked for a major design practice from before the birth of CDM until my retirement mid 2020, I know how rarely HSE came to see us! - which translates as ONLY when something had gone wrong on a project ALREADY on site.

....and the publicly available statistics for HSE prosecutions and enforcement notices are conspicuous for the almost minimal enforcement of the management requirements of CDM when it comes to the front end duty holders - Client, Designers, Planning Supervisors/CDM Co-ordinators/Principal Designers.

The enforcement statistics are very heavily skewed to the soft targets - the Contractors - usually for offences worded in almost identical terms before CDM as in what has been in Part 4 of CDM 2007 and 2015. 

I did a detailed breakdown of the proscution charges under CDM which made it to conviction in early 2020 and a more limited analysis last month. Virtually NOTHING involving Clients, Designers, PDs.

This is probably at least in part a recognition by HSE that it does not have sufficient resources with the skill sets to identify what Designers might be doing wrong, until such time as something DOES goes wrong  and an HSE Inspector may apply hindsight bias.

There was a morning over 2 years after an incident on site when two Improvement Notices landed in my intray.

A few weeks later, the Inspector's Regional Director confirmed that the Notices would be withdrawn - it was that or face a very difficult time in the Industrial Tribunal attempting to justify the Notices following our Appeal against the basis of their service. The Inspector had put two and two together and had not made that add up to 5 but 105 and we had reams of evidence to prove it.

This issue of skill sets will probably be exacerbated as the Regulations that support the Building Safety Act come into force. HSE simply doesn't have enough Inspectors with experience of actually DOING design and actually building structures (NOT just touring a site to look for missing guard-rails and inadequate exhaust ventilation where cutting operations are being done).

Some design issues are easy. Easy to work out what height the parapet has to be on a road bridge. The Design Manual for Roads and Bridges tells you what height to work to depending on what is crossing. So higher if being used by cattle than if only used by humans.

Much more difficult for the HSE Inspector to recognise that perhaps insuffient ground has been planned to enable a crane to be used to put the bridge into place.