The Health and safety module is a place to record the health and safety duties of an architectural designer on a project under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015: who holds which role, the design risks identified and what was done about them, and the information passed between the parties.
What it is, and is not
- It is a record-keeping tool. It describes what has and has not been recorded, such as recorded, sent, missing or out of date. It never says a project complies, is approved or is safe, and it never makes a judgement about a risk for you.
- It covers the pre-construction phase only. It does not monitor a site, track a construction phase plan or follow a job to completion.
- It is for projects in Great Britain. It does not cover Northern Ireland's regulations or the dutyholder rules under the Building Regulations, which are separate regimes.
- Nothing in it is legal advice. Where it mentions a duty, check the regulation itself or take advice.
Before you start
Health and safety must be switched on in Settings → Modules: see Turning modules on and off. Reading it and editing it are separate permissions, and your practice decides who holds each.
Roles on a project
Open a project's Health and safety page to record who holds which role, such as client, principal designer and principal contractor, and for how long. The role is linked to someone in the project's own directory, so you cannot record a role held by a person who is not on the job.
The client is worked out from whoever holds the Client role on the project, not entered a second time. Questions about the job that you have not yet answered stay as To be determined, rather than assuming an answer. An appointment is ended, not deleted, so the history stays.
The risk register
The risk register, reached from that page, lists the design risks on the project. Each entry records the hazard, who might be harmed, what was done about it, and a rating. A change to a risk is kept as a revision, and two people cannot overwrite each other without a conflict warning.
How risks are rated is the practice's choice, under Settings → Modules → Health & safety: no rating, Low / Medium / High, or a 5×5 matrix. You also keep the list of people who may be harmed there.
The register can be prompted: a note appears beside a high residual rating with no follow-up recorded. It is a prompt about your own record and never blocks anything. It is not printed on the schedule.
The register can be downloaded as a PDF schedule, a working record as at the date, not an issued document.
Consultants writing their own risks
You can invite a consultant to enter risks directly, through their own link: see Working on a job you have been invited to. You review each one and mark it Accepted, Returned for changes, or Rejected. You can see who wrote each risk.
Information given to the parties
The Information section records the pre-construction information and the documents that go with it. Tag a document on the project as a kind of information, then record each time a version was given to a party. The record shows, for each party:
- Provided, platform, when it was sent through the platform;
- Provided, recorded by practice, when you recorded it by hand, labelled as your own account;
- Earlier version provided, when a newer version has been tagged since;
- Not yet recorded.
These are worked out whenever the page is read. They are descriptions of what has been recorded, not a statement that anyone has received or understood anything.
The health and safety file
The Health and safety file section on a project's page is where you choose what goes into a file for whoever works on the building later, and hand it on.
The working set. Add risks from the register and documents from the project, each with a reason: Residual risk, Maintenance and cleaning access, As-built information or Other. The working set is your own selection and it changes as the job does. Taking an entry out needs a reason, and it stays in the history. Beside an entry the page may say, for example, Changed since the last version. That is a description of your records, not a block on anything.
Versions. Freeze version fixes the working set as it stands, as a numbered version that never changes afterwards. Choose what it is for: Interim version, Passed to the principal contractor or Passed to the client at the end of the project. The last two name the regulation they are labelled by. A version records the exact revision of each risk and the exact version of each document, so version 2 says the same thing for as long as it exists. Freezing moves risks that are addressed, or passed to the principal designer, to In file. Risks that are still open stay as they are.
An interim version is labelled as that. After one, the page quotes the regulations it relates to (12(6) and 12(7)) and never says your part is done. Check the regulations themselves for what they ask of you.
Sending a version. Send on a version emails a link through Secure Sharing. The recipient gets a contents page and each document in the version, with view and download. They never see your working register. You choose how long the link lasts: 1, 5 or 10 years, with 5 as the default. Sending writes its own hand-over record. A contact with no email address is listed but cannot be sent to; record it by hand instead.
Recording a hand-over made another way. Record handed over is for a copy you posted, handed over or emailed yourself. It is labelled as your practice's own account of something that happened elsewhere, because it is not independent evidence. Withdraw a record made in error, with a reason. It stays in the history. A hand-over made through the platform cannot be withdrawn, because it happened: revoke the link from the share instead.
Who a version can go to. This is set in Settings → Modules → Health & safety, under Who the health and safety file may go to, separately for each kind of version. A version for the client or the principal contractor always goes to that role. Your choice is who counts as holding it, for example only the client the version names, or also whoever is the client now. An interim version can go to any contact except your own practice, or only to people with a role on the project. Sending and recording a hand-over use the same rule.
A link that is ending. The page says when a hand-over's link ends, and says so more plainly in the 90 days before. Your practice owner is also sent one email when a link comes within 90 days of ending, listing it so you can send a new one. Who is told, or nobody, is set in Settings → Preferences, under A health and safety file link is nearing its end. Switching the email off removes the email only. The date stays on the project's page.
Across your projects
With the module on, Health & safety appears in the sidebar. It lists your projects with a health and safety record and, for each, what its own records show: for example 1 risk is Open, or Interim version 1: no hand-over has been recorded. Each project links to its own page.
It is a way to find the project to open. It does not score, rank or total anything, and it does not say any duty has been met or not met. Show projects with picks projects by one fact, and Order changes the order. Projects with nothing recorded are in a group of their own, and archived projects show only where their file is. The file's facts are shown only where your records say your practice is the principal designer, or where they cannot tell, and in that case they say so. The page is worked out each time you open it.