Pre-construction information
What should pre-construction information contain?
Short answer
HSE guidance says that when complete, pre-construction information must include proportionate information about the project, such as the client brief and key dates; the planning and management of the project, including resources, time and the arrangements for cooperation and coordination; the health and safety hazards of the site, including design and construction hazards and how they will be addressed; and any relevant information in an existing health and safety file. On a small project that is a short document, not a long one.
The four required headings
- The project
What is being built, the client brief, and the key dates of the construction phase.
- Planning and management
The resources and time allocated to each stage, and the arrangements for cooperation between dutyholders and for coordinating the work.
- The health and safety hazards of the site
Including design and construction hazards, and how they will be addressed. This is usually the longest section and the one that earns the document its place.
- Anything relevant in an existing health and safety file
From earlier work on the building. Often overlooked, and often the single most useful document available.
What that looks like on a domestic extension
A worked list. Not every item applies to every project, which is the point of proportionality.
| Topic | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| The building | Age, construction, condition, and what is known versus assumed |
| Occupation | Whether anyone is living or working there during the works |
| Access | How people, materials, plant and waste get in and out, and past what |
| Neighbours | Adjoining occupiers, shared access, party wall interfaces, the public footpath |
| Asbestos | For a building of the relevant age: the survey, the findings, or the absence of both |
| Structure | What is loadbearing, what is being removed, what has to be propped and in what order |
| Services | Incoming supplies, meter positions, concealed and buried runs, isolation points |
| Work at height | Roof levels and edges the design creates, and fragile surfaces |
| Ground | Where there is excavation, underpinning or a basement, including known ground conditions and nearby foundations |
| Fire and escape | How escape works while the building is opened up |
| Design residual risks | What each designer could not eliminate, and what they expect to be done about it |
| The file | What the project should leave behind for the building |
Build a project specific version of this list with the free checklist tool.
Length is not the measure
HSE guidance asks for information that is in a convenient form and clear, concise and easily understandable, to help other dutyholders carry out their duties. A twelve page pack that a builder skims is worth less than three pages they act on.
A test that works. Take each paragraph and ask what somebody would do differently for having read it. If the answer is nothing, it is padding. If the answer is something specific, it is the reason the document exists.
What good looks like on the hard bits
Asbestos. Not a paragraph of general law. Either the survey and what it found, or a clear statement that no survey exists, that the building is of an age where asbestos containing materials are likely, and who is commissioning what before the relevant work begins.
Structure. Not that structural work is dangerous. The engineer's actual sequence, the propping requirement, and any maximum unsupported length or hold point in the design.
Neighbours. Not that care should be taken. That number 42 uses the side return every morning, or that the scaffold has to oversail the neighbour's garden and the agreement is or is not in place.
Sources
- CDM 2015, regulation 4: client duties in relation to managing projects legislation.gov.uk
- CDM 2015, regulation 11: duties of a principal designer legislation.gov.uk
- Managing health and safety in construction, L153 HSE guidance on the Regulations
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