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16 February 2005 - CDM Duty-Holders Study
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The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) funded a research report,
completed by the Institute of Occupational Medicine, with the aim of
"investigating practices in communication and information exchange amongst CDM
duty-holders" conforming with the key awareness aims of the Construction
(Design and Management) Regulations 1994 (as amended 2000), Construction (Design
and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland, 1995) (as amended 2001), (CDM)
and related health and safety legislation.
The study was made throughout the UK, including Northern
Ireland, using questionnaires with follow-up interviews and focus groups, all of
which was voluntary on the part of the duty-holder groups. All
duty-holders affected by the regulations were represented in the study.
The completed report found that the CDM Regulations and recent
ACoP had provided the following:
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The raising of awareness within the construction industry
(especially the larger contractor groups), of health and safety issues.
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Clarification of duty-holder responsibilities and roles.
Suggestion was made of some improvement.
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The regulations helped in the promotion of good health and
safety practices in the management and communications.
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A need for correct time and resource planning was highlighted.
There were also problem areas identified by the study such as
the following:
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Time spent on paperwork, in some cases irrelevant to legislative
needs, was identified as being too much.
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Not enough was being done to implement health and safety
procedures.
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Some duty-holders it was felt, had a lack of understanding of
basic risk assessment procedures.
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Confusion over assessing the competency of those duty-holders
appointed under the regulations.
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Concern was expressed over the general lack of basic health and
safety training provided to some site operatives and duty-holders.
The full report of the study can be accessed by clicking the
following link. However, please be aware that the pdf file will take
a moment or two to load. Very comprehensive interesting report well
worth the momentarily wait:
CDM Duty-Holders Study
Article by Alexandra Johnston
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