Hi McElroy

I think that:

(a) it is more a case of how significant a new appointment is than a matter of how often

(b) the F10 online system was poorly thought out and probably gives HSE misleading information.

HSE introduced the online notification system in 2007 and heavily promoted it but there is nothing in law to stop notification by the Client by snail mail to HSE at Bootle.

In ye olden days, we used to email F10s to the relevant local HSE office but got our knuckles rapped by one office who told us that their email address was only to be used for asbestos notifications and that if we weren't going to play the game we had to send a bit of paper to Bootle - who would then communicate to the local office.

The whole purpose of F10 from BEFORE CDM has been about giving HSE intelligence about construction projects - so they have some information about the scale of the industry (albeit grossly undernotified) and before CDM, a Principal Inspector could use F10 to tell one of their team whether the F10 merited proactive inspection of the named Contractor or not - with coding on the form:

V - Visit

PV - Possible visit

NV - No visit.

Then CDM 1994 came along and the Form 10 now included at least two, then if done properly at least three key duty holders, i.e.

Client

Planning Supervisor which morphed to CDMC and now Principal Designer

Principal Contractor

....and the local Principal Inspector COULD make exactly the same targeting decisions about each of these key duty holders as previously done with the Contractor pre CDM.

In the early days, HSE made a lot of noise about proactive activity at the early stages of projects "where there is most opportunity" to make life inherently less risky when the project reaches the construction phase.

But that didn't really happen and seems to have gone out of the window with the online notification system.

I attended a meeting in 2007 where an HSE Inspector was pushing this new and improved online system.

So somebody asked "What do we do if we don't know exactly when the project will start on site"

Reply - "Put in your best guess for the MONTH when it will start on site."

At which point I asked "What about when we have a project where we haven't any real clue which YEAR it will reach site, and in some cases might NEVER reach site".

Reply - "Don't want to know about such a project as by the time it gets to site the relevant Inspector will have been moved on to a different role." 

So very much telling us that HSE's focus was now on what was happening once the project has started on SITE.

So, why have management requirements on Client/Designer/PS aka CDMC aka PD?!?!

Next problem with the online system is that whenever you amend an F10 it overwrites what has been submitted before (UNLESS HSE has made a major change to the system).

So, imagine a major infrastructure project - say widening 10 miles of a road from single carriageway to dual.

Client appoints a Designer to do a preliminary route design - which in simplistic terms mostly means deciding which bits of the 10 miles will be done by parallel widening and which by constructing a new road to one side and/or other of the existing road.

At this stage CDM says that an F10 must be submitted with details of Client, Designer(s) and PD. "Dualling of A999 between Newtown and Oldville, inclusive of multiple advance works and construction of new highway, bridges and other structures". Dates various dates starting mid 2023 with Main Contract scheduled to be awarded July 2027 with probable time on site 9 months".

As part of the initial planning and design the Client procures some "Advance Works" such as intrusive Ground Investigation. So this is "construction work", it forms part of a notifiable project (whether or not the GI contract would be notifiable in its own right) so another F10 is submitted this time repeating the names of the Client, Designer(s) and PD but adding the name of the GI Contractor for the works and giving a clue as to the work to be done - "GI at various locations in the vicinity of the A999 in between Newtown and Oldville" with dates 10 July to 2 August 2023.

If this overwrites the original F10, HSE has just lost what it actually should want to know!! 

This project is now officially about to finish in August 2023 when actually the £100m major civil engineering contract is not due to start on site for another 4 years which could easily be 6 years or more AND in the meantime there is a Client, Designer(s) and PD that HSE could be proactive with to see what they are doing to make life easier for several Principal Contractors doing multiple Contracts over several years.

HSE says that there is a way round this. You update the F10 but include a reminder that the GI is just part of a major project which is going to have multiple Principal Contractors and multiple start and end dates for those PCs, but that takes a lot of words and adds precisely NIL value to the Client who is either wasting time typing all these extra words or paying a Consultant to do them on their behalf.

There is another way round that is legally compliant and does not unnecessarily waste resources. Send a SUPPLEMENTARY F10 for the GI which means that HSE still has the original F10 for the overall project ASSUMING that HSE doesn't choose to override the information in that by overwriting the information when the F10 for the GI arrives!

The real embarrassment might come when HSE get an online notification of the Main Works in February 2028 saying that the Principal Contractor has been appointed and is due to start of 12 May.

"Why has this major civil engineering project never been notified to us before? It's not on our system. You are a huge client and I am thinking of prosecution."

"Well, WE have a record of each and every one of the 35 paper F10s that we have submitted by snail mail to Bootle over a period of X years. The first set out details of the project overview and we have notified every significant change in key duty holder since."

Oops.

HSE has this month published a Research Report on the impact of the role of PD - RR1198 and the lead researcher has just published a supplement to the RR with further details.

It is relatively easy to guess from the text in the supplement that my former employer responded to the consultation that informed this report and one of the things that amazed me was how FEW Forms 10 had been identified as being entered in 2018-2020, but then I realised that many of the F10s would quite possibly have been overwritten so as to reduce the total numbers of "notifications".

Overall, my guess is that if the HSE has an F10 telling them the name of the Principal Contractor and the dates for the Main Contract they are not really interested in much else these days.

Edited by user 28 June 2023 16:10:25(UTC)  | Reason: Typo