Have You Complied With The CDM Health and Safety Requirements For Your House Extension.

The CDM Regulations stand for Construction Design and Management of health and safety of the entire project from inception to final use by the occupier & all the relevant stages in between.

In 1996 the Government tried to do something about the high fatality an injury rate on building sites but rather than employing more H S Inspectors, they installed legislation that placed responsibility back onto the private sector or individual.

Fortunately many domestic home or house extensions do not need to fully comply with the CDM health and safety regulations except for certain limits.

Any home owner completing a house extension needs to ensure what their obligations are under the act & whether or not their building project requires compliance under the CDM Regulations.

Hopefully, the site owners Building Designer would have already advised them of the requirements and whether or not it applies to their scheme.

Here are the general requirements for when a house or home extension needs to comply with the CDM Regulations:-

The CDM 2007 Regulations apply to most common building, civil engineering and engineering construction work. You must notify HSE of the site if the construction work is expected to either:

• last longer than 30 days; or
• involve more than 500 person days of construction work;

HSE should be notified in writing before construction work starts; you can use form F10. Your notification should be sent to the HSE office nearest to the proposed site.

This is usually completed by the main contractor but the home owner needs to check and make sure.

Your Building Designer also has a requirement to complete a Risk Assessment for the design and pass on any relevant information on the identified risks and how they can be minimised or mitigated.

The site owner also has a duty to complete their own risk assessment for the site by again identifying any know risks and passing the information onto the Building Designer and the client.  Examples of possible client known risks are knowing locations of underground or overhead cables and services, ground conditions, wells & nay other hazards that may be on site that nay be exposed to the builder.

In Many cases the site owner will have to engage a properly qualified CDM Co-ordinator to manage and maintain the projects Health and safety file from design through to occupation for which there is now a whole team of experienced CDM advisors for the client to employ for yet another set of fees and costs.