These Regulations came into force on 6th June, 1995 and impose duties on “Clients, Designers and Contractors” i.e. local, health or education authorities or any person involved in the design and construction of projects. The Regulations set out in detail a safety management system for the design and construction of projects that you might be involved in.

They require that:

• Safety and health is taken into account during design and tendering;
• A Safety and Health Plan be drawn up for the management and co-ordination of the site activities;
• A Safety File be delivered to the client on completion of the project.

The Client must appoint competent PROJECT SUPERVISORS for both the design stage and the construction stage. A Project Supervisor may be an individual but is more likely to be a company or organisation. The same person/company/organisation can be both Project Supervisor Design (P.S.D.) and Project Supervisor Construction (P.S.C.) and can be the client, if competent.

The P.S.D. must make sure that health and safety is taken account of when designing a construction project, in order to reduce potential health and safety problems arising during subsequent construction or maintenance and must:

• Take account of health and safety when estimating time schedules for a project;
• Prepare a preliminary Safety and Health Plan which will include information on “particular risks”;
• Provide any information to the P.S.C. which needs to be included in the Safety File.

The P.S.C. must develop the Safety and Health Plan, before construction work starts and update it to take account of any changes which occur.

The P.S.C. must notify the H.S.A. before work starts, of all projects where work lasts longer than 30 working days or over 500 person days (notifiable sites).

Where more than one contractor is involved, the P.S.C. must prepare and update the Safety File and deliver it to the client on completion of the project.

Designers must take into account the health and safety of those who will be constructing/maintaining or repairing the structure that is designed and take into account any directions from P.S.D.

This plan must be prepared by the Project Supervisor (Construction) for all notifiable sites and those where there are “particular risks”. The P.S.D. will have provided the preliminary plan.

This is required for those projects where more than one Contractor is engaged. It is the reference document for future maintenance or construction work and must be passed on by the client to any new owner on disposal of the property.

Employees must co-operate to ensure work site safety.

New duties are imposed on contractors and on authorities who act as “contractors” where direct labour works are undertaken, to appoint a Safety Officer if more than 20 employed and to comply with the regulations.

The regulations contain seven important Schedules.

IPB’s PL and EL policies operate, subject to their terms and conditions, to indemnify the project client for its legal liability (including a personal indemnity to employees) in the event of accidental personal injury or damage to third party property. All consultants should, as part of their conditions of appointment, be asked to present Professional Indemnity policies for inspection and approval. IPB can provide a report on these policies (and on contractor’s insurances) on sight of the actual policy wordings.

For further information contact your local Health and Safety Authority Office.