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Month: August 2015

What is CHAS Accreditation?

Insight by

amanda

Amanda Lambert

Published on

19 August 2015

CHAS

What is CHAS Accreditation

CHAS Accreditation was a government-run (not-for-profit) scheme administered by the London Borough of Merton. CHAS was acquired by Veriforce LLC, a US-registered company with headquarters in Houston, Texas, USA, in 2022.

CHAS cofounded and helped pioneer the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) and the Common Assessment Standard.

CHAS (Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme) has been developed and refined over a number of years by local government health and safety and procurement professionals, with the support of the Health and Safety Executive.

Although government bodies have developed CHAS, it is available for use by any public and private sector organisation as an aid when short-listing contractors, suppliers and consultants who apply to work for them.

CHAS provides information and assurances about the health and safety systems and competencies of the organisations that have been CHAS assessed or registered as CHAS accredited.

Organisations must submit an application to CHAS to become registered with CHAS and then have a CHAS assessment carried out. By doing so, their potential clients know that they meet minimum acceptable health and safety compliance standards. Clients from both the public and private sectors use CHAS to make assessments of contractors in this way.

Once the CHAS application has been approved for an organisation, their details are uploaded to the CHAS database, where client members of the Scheme can review an organisation’s details to check that they are, in fact, CHAS registered. One of the benefits to contractors is that by making a successful CHAS application, they can demonstrate to a wide number of potential clients that they achieve or exceed the minimum standards laid down by the assessment scheme.

With the implementation of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM), there are stricter requirements on Clients and Principal Contractors to ensure that they only employ ‘Competent Contractors’. CHAS has been named in the CDM Regulations by the Health and Safety Executive as being one of the assessment schemes that can be used when demonstrating your competence as an organisation.

Learn more about CHAS

We have a series of articles where you can learn more about CHAS. The list of articles is below:

If you have any questions on what is CHAS accreditation please get in touch.

How do the CDM 2015 regulation changes affect you?

Insight by

amanda

Amanda Lambert

Published on

12 August 2015

CDM

Table of contents

How do the CDM 2015 regulation changes affect you?

Did you know there are CDM 2015 regulation changes that came into place from 6 April 2015. Here is our quick guide on how they might affect you.

New legislation

From 6 April 2015, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) came into force, replacing CDM 2007. The key changes of the new CDM regulations are listed below:

  • The revised Regulations apply to all projects including domestic client jobs
  • All projects must have a written construction phase plan
  • The role of CDM co-ordinator in the previous CDM Regs 2007 has been removed and replaced with a new role of principal designer
  • There is a duty to make sure all persons doing the job have the right skills, knowledge, training and experience
  • A Principal designer and principal contractor must be appointed on projects that will have more than one contractor

CDM 2015 main changes

CDM Coordinator role replaced by a ‘Principal Designer’. Clients are required to appoint a ‘Principal Designer’ for all projects involving more than one contractor (trade contractor) on site at one time

Client’s duties strengthened. Several of the previous functions of the CDM Co-ordinator are now to be carried out by the Clients directly, and the wording for these duties is more onerous. Additionally the Client has a new duty to ensure that both the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor comply with their duties.

Client’s “key project advisor” role removed. Previously the CDM Co-ordinator acted as the “key project advisor in respect of construction health and safety”, however under CDM2015 the Principal Designer only has to provide advice to the Client with respect to Pre-Construction Information. Accordingly, Clients that need help with their duties are advised in the HSE Guidance Document to seek competent specialist advice.

Duties to be applicable to domestic projects. For domestic projects involving more than one contractor the Principal Contractor will normally assume the Client duties. The domestic Client can choose to appoint a Principal Designer for the project. However if they do not make this appointment, the first Designer appointed during the pre-construction phase becomes the Principal Designer for the project.

Principal Designer and Principal Contractor required for all projects with more than one “trade” Contractor on site. Clients must appoint both a Principal Designer and Principal Contractor. Principal Designer’s duties include identifying and controlling risks, assisting the Client in the production of PreConstruction Information, and the preparation of the Health and Safety File. Principal Contractor duties include the planning, management and co-ordination of construction phase of the project.

Construction Phase Plan is required for all projects. The Client is to ensure that a Construction Phase Plan, provided by the Contractor or Principal Contractor, is in place before any works commence.

Threshold for notification. Notification to the HSE is required for any project exceeding 30 construction days with 20 or more workers, or if the project exceeds 500 person days.

‘Explicit competence’ requirements removed. The Client will need to ensure those that are to be appointed (i.e. Designer, Contractor or Principal Contractor and Principal Designer) can demonstrate appropriate information, instruction, training and supervision.

Further information

The CITB have produced guidance for all the roles covered under the new CDM 2015 regulations, which can be downloaded here. They have also developed a free CDM Wizard app for Android and IOS to help quickly produce construction phase plans, which can be downloaded via the links below.

The HSE have also produced detailed guidance called “Managing health and safety in construction – Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015”, which covers the legal requirements for CDM 2015.

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