The Designer: Duties Start Before Anything Reaches a Drawing
- Paul Scanlon
- Jul 30
- 1 min read
Designers have CDM 2015 duties before anything reaches a drawing.
Regulation 9 places obligations on designers — architects, structural engineers, M&E consultants, interior designers, landscape architects, and others who produce or modify design — to consider health and safety as an integral part of the design process.
The duty is to eliminate foreseeable risks to the health and safety of those constructing, maintaining, or using the structure so far as reasonably practicable. Where risks cannot be eliminated, they must be reduced or controlled and the residual risk communicated to the Principal Designer.
What this looks like in practice:
A structural engineer specifying a connection detail should consider whether workers can safely make that connection on site — and whether the sequence of construction creates temporary instability.
An architect placing plant on a roof must consider how it will be accessed safely for future maintenance — not just how it looks on a section drawing.
An interior designer specifying materials must consider whether those materials create installation risks — fumes, weight, cutting hazards — and whether those risks have been communicated.
For clients, this matters because you appoint the designers. If you are not asking your design team how they are considering CDM in their design process, you are missing one of the most effective risk management opportunities on your project.
A short question at the next design team meeting is a good place to start.
Get your free Client Guide to CDM 2015 here: cdm2015.co.uk/resource-download
Comments