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Last edited 28 May 2024

Dutyholders in the construction industry

1 Introduction
2 CDM
3 Building Safety Act 2022
4 Dutyholders under other regulations and acts
5 Related articles on Designing Buildings

[edit] Introduction

In construction, a duty holder is any person who is appointed to be responsible for a specific aspect of a building or project. Their responsibility is usually to maintain an overall standard and quality that is conducive to good health and safety and quality of work. The duty holder therefore has a duty to their employers, their colleagues and ultimately the building users and passers-by.

They are key roles (whether fulfilled by individuals or organisations) that are assigned specific responsibilities at particular phases of the building life cycle.

[edit] CDM

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM Regulations) are intended to ensure that health and safety issues are properly considered during a project’s development so that the risk of harm to those who have to build, use and maintain structures is reduced.

Under the CDM 2015 regulations, there are six defined duty holders who are charged with a commitment to the control of construction health and safety risk management.

[edit] Clients

Clients must make suitable arrangements for managing a project, including making sure that:

Other dutyholders are appointed as appropriate and
Sufficient time and resources are allocated.

They must also make sure that:

Relevant information is prepared and provided to other dutyholders;
The principal designer and principal contractor carry out their duties, and
Welfare facilities are provided.

[edit] Principal designers

These are designers appointed by the client on projects involving more than one contractor. They can be an organisation or an individual with sufficient knowledge, experience and ability to carry out the role. They must:

Plan, manage, monitor and coordinate health and safety in the pre-construction phase of a project. This includes:

Identifying, eliminating or controlling foreseeable risks;
Ensuring designers carry out their duties, and
Prepare and provide relevant information to other dutyholders.

Also, they must liaise with the principal contractor to help in the planning, management, monitoring and coordination of the construction phase.

These are organisations or individuals who, as part of a business, prepare or modify designs for a building, product or system relating to construction work. When preparing or modifying designs, they must eliminate, reduce or control foreseeable risks that may arise during:

Construction and
The maintenance and use of a building once it is built.

Also, they must provide information to other members of the project team to help them fulfil their duties.

[edit] Principal contractor

These are contractors appointed by the client to coordinate the construction phase of a project where it involves more than one contractor. They must:

Plan, manage, monitor and coordinate health and safety in the construction phase of a project. This includes:

Liaising with the client and principal designer;
Preparing the construction phase plan PDF, and
Organising cooperation between contractors and coordinating their work.

Also, they must ensure:

Suitable site inductions are provided;
Reasonable steps are taken to prevent unauthorised access;
Workers are consulted and engaged in securing their health and safety, and
Welfare facilities are provided.

[edit] Contractors

These are contractors who carry out the actual construction work, and can be an individual or a company. They must plan, manage and monitor construction work under their control so it is carried out without risks to health and safety.

For projects involving more than one contractor, they must coordinate their activities with others in the project team – in particular, comply with directions given to them by the principal designer or principal contractor.

For single contractor projects, they must prepare a construction phase plan.

[edit] Workers

These are those working for or under the control of contractors on a construction site.

Workers must:

Be consulted about matters which affect their health, safety and welfare;
Take care of their own health and safety, and of others who might be affected by their actions;
Report anything they see which is likely to endanger either their own or others’ health and safety, and
Cooperate with their employer, fellow workers, contractors and other dutyholders.

Duty holders generally co-operate with each other, co-ordinate and share information, and work together to achieve the best possible environment for health and safety.

[edit] Domestic clients

CDM 15 also has an extra category of dutyholder, that of ‘domestic clients’. Although within the scope of CDM 2015, their client duties are transferred to the contractor or the principal contractor, depending on whether it is a single or multiple contractor project. CDM 2015 adds that in any case, the domestic client can instead choose to have a written agreement with the principal designer to carry out the client duties.

For more information see: CDM

[edit] Building Safety Act 2022

The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced the most radical change to the English regulatory landscape for the built environment in a generation. Needless to say, many of the changes have far-reaching consequences for construction clients. Some of the biggest changes have been to the Building Regulations 2010. Not only do they introduce new procedures, but they also impose new duties on construction clients, with, under revisions to the Building Act 1984, harsher penalties for failures to comply.

The Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) responded to these shortcomings, opening the way for a piece of secondary legislation– The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023 – to fix them. It does this by amending the BRegs to:

Introduce new dutyholder roles with accompanying duties.
Insist that these dutyholders have adequate competence.
Impose new procedures to mitigate risks to the safety of building users.

In the context of the UK Building Safety Act, dutyholders are individuals or organisations that have specific legal duties and responsibilities related to the safety and compliance of buildings, particularly higher-risk buildings. The concept of dutyholders is central to the regulatory framework established by the Building Safety Act, which aims to clarify roles and responsibilities throughout the lifecycle of a building. Dutyholders play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and compliance of buildings, promoting a culture of accountability and transparency, and protecting the health, safety, and well-being of building occupants and the wider community.

Closely related to these measures, the BSA also amended the Building Act 1984 to make dutyholders’ non-compliance more punitive in various ways.

[edit] Dutyholders under the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) 2023

As the name suggests, dutyholders are persons (i.e., individuals or corporate bodies) with legal duties. The new changes to the BRegs identify five kinds:

It is possible for one person to take on more than one dutyholder role. For example, principal dutyholders do just that: they have designer or contractor duties, with additional principal dutyholder obligations on top.

[edit] Clients

Under the BRegs, a ‘client’ is ‘any person for whom a project is carried out.’ There is a special sub-category of client called a ‘domestic client’, which means ‘a client for whom a project is carried out which is not in the course or furtherance of a business of that client.’

This includes Mr and Mrs Smith extending their home. They are treated differently because, rather like consumers, they are generally inexpert buyers of design and building services and are thus deserving of protection. Although they still have duties, these duties are less onerous than those of non-domestic clients.

A client cannot escape the client duties. Indeed, if a client fails to appoint others to dutyholder roles, or if other dutyholders’ contracts come to an end before the project has concluded, a client may find itself responsible for carrying out other dutieson top of its own.

[edit] Other dutyholders

The other dutyholders all have a general duty to cooperate and comply with relevant requirements, which of course helps clients in meeting their duties.

A ‘designer’ is ‘any person who in the course of a business either carries out any design work, or arranges for, or instructs, any person under their control to do so.’

This definition is rather broad and can easily extend to persons who might ordinarily think of themselves primarily as contractors or clients (or domestic clients).

A ‘contractor’ is ‘any person who, in the course of a business, carries out, manages or controls any building work.’

This group can include a client but not a domestic client.

In a bid to assign accountability for compliance, the BRegs now require you to identify one designer and one contractor to be responsible for signing off on, respectively, all the design work and all the building work. The collective name for these persons is ‘principal dutyholders’.

Principal dutyholders are the client’s best friends, the persons they rely on to help them to comply, secure a completion certificate from the relevant authority, and thus manage their ongoing liabilities for the safety of users in their buildings.

A ‘principal designer’ takes on additional duties on top of their duties as designers. To do so, they must have ‘control over the design work.’

A ‘principal contractor’ takes on additional duties on top of their duties as contractors. They must have ‘control over the building work.’

Although there can only ever be one of each principal dutyholder in post at one time, it is of course possible to replace them mid-project.