When is a project notifiable under CDM 2015?
Regulation 6 is arithmetic over the programme and the site diary. It is not a question anybody answers once in March.
A project is notifiable to the Health and Safety Executive if the construction work is likely to meet either of two thresholds. They are independent: hitting one is enough. To run your own figures, use the notifiable project checker.
The two tests
| Limb | The threshold |
|---|---|
| Duration and headcount | Longer than 30 working days and having more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point |
| Volume of work | Exceeding 500 person days |
The first limb is a conjunction, and it is the one most often got wrong. A nine-month job with a gang of eight is not notifiable on that limb, no matter how long it runs — the headcount never crosses 20. A three-week job with forty people on it is not notifiable on that limb either, because it never crosses 30 working days. Both halves have to be true.
“Simultaneously” means at the same moment, not over the life of the job. Ninety people who each spend a fortnight on site, never more than fifteen at a time, do not cross the 20-worker threshold — though they may well cross 500 person days, which is why the second limb exists.
Who has to notify
Notification is the client’s duty. The client must give notice to HSE in writing — the F10 — as soon as is practicable before the construction phase begins. It is not the principal contractor’s duty, and it is not discharged by somebody else volunteering to do it, though in practice the form is very often completed by the principal contractor on the client’s behalf.
The part that catches people out
Notifiability is a property of the work as it actually turns out, not of the work as it was described at tender. A project that was not notifiable in February becomes notifiable the week the programme is extended, or the week the gang grows. The duty arises on the day the threshold is crossed, and the notice is owed as soon as is practicable from that day — not from the day somebody noticed.
That is why a tick box answered once, at the start, is the wrong shape for this question. The answer changes when the job changes, and nothing about a checkbox changes when the job does.
What notifiability does not do
Notifiability decides one thing only: whether the F10 is owed. It is frequently confused with two other duties that are triggered by something else entirely.
- Appointing a principal designer and principal contractor is triggered by there being more than one contractor, not by notifiability. A small non-notifiable job with two contractors on it still needs both appointments, in writing. Where a client does not make them, the client takes on those duties itself — which is rarely what anybody intended.
- The construction phase plan is required for every project, notifiable or not. On a single-contractor project the contractor draws it up; where there is more than one, the principal contractor does, before the site is set up. The construction phase plan builder drafts one.
Domestic clients
Where the client is a domestic client — someone having work done on their own home, not in the course of a business — the client’s duties normally pass to the contractor, or to the principal contractor where there is more than one. The work can still be notifiable; the duty simply sits somewhere else.
How Veystrum handles it
Veystrum computes Regulation 6 every time the CDM page is read, from the programme and the site diary rather than from an answer somebody typed. Duration comes from the working calendar, peak simultaneous headcount from the diary, and person-days from both. When the threshold is crossed the date it was crossed is latched — so a project that later shrinks still shows that the duty arose, and when.
It will also say when it cannot tell. A diary with days missing produces a peak that is a floor rather than a figure, and the page says so instead of reporting a number it cannot stand behind.