Foreword

CDM 2015 provides a flexible regulatory framework through which clients, supported by their principal designers and principal contractors, can determine the most effective arrangements for designing and delivering every construction project in a safe and healthy manner.

Although new to CDM 2015, the role of principal designer now brings to risk management and planning in the preconstruction phase what the principal contractor has successfully provided in the construction phase for many years.

The benefits to design risk management and subsequent risk reduction in the construction phase will be increasingly realised as the industry moves ever closer toward appointing and embedding the principal designer role from the outset and at the heart of every preconstruction phase.

HSE acknowledges and welcomes all industry initiatives and publications, such as this guide written by Peter Caplehorn, where they help dutyholders understand and meet their obligations under the Regulations in a sensible and proportionate way – thereby delivering a safer and healthier construction industry in the 21st century.

Simon Longbottom
Head of Construction Sector
Health and Safety Executive