Scottish construction is not a sector to sit still for long.
Recently, however, that movement has been in one direction: up. With the help of statistics and information gleaned from members of the Scottish Building Federation, as revealed by s1jobs last month, the Scottish Construction Monitor has awarded the expanding industry a confidence rating of +29 for the first three months of 2015 – marking a three point growth on the end of last year.
This was the seventh consecutive quarter of growth, and this record high has brought fresh optimism for new contracts and more jobs.
But, alongside this renewed optimism, the industry is also experiencing a teeth-rattling shake-up.
The new Construction Design & Management (CDM) Regulations came into force on April 6, having been drawn up by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after consultations last year on what changes were needed to help construction grow in Scotland.
So what can we expect moving forward through 2015?
Well, the architects of the new framework wanted to rethink the 2007 CDM regulations, widely acknowledged as an overly bureaucratic and burdensome approach to building competence, especially for smaller enterprises. And, as we all know, too much red tape means projects are slowed – nothing much gets done when paperwork is king.
So with processes simplified, we should expect to see a smoother, faster approach to channelling information through the construction pipeline.
Firstly, the new process puts the duty on those who appoint staff to ensure they have the right skills, knowledge and confidence for their appropriate positions. Employers will now exercise more care and due diligence when it comes to hiring. Skills training will inevitably play a big role here in ensuring competence and promoting efficiency.
The regulations will also replace the Approved Code of Practice with targeted guidance, which will have specific legal status. This is set up through CITB using a panel of boffins and experts to write guidance for the five new duty holders: namely the client, principal designer, principal contractor, designer and contractor. There will also be an additional piece of guidance for workers.
With the aim of being user-friendly and easily accessible, it’s hoped this will help workers in each of their various roles to understand their responsibilities and act accordingly.
While the new regulations will have significant implications for all those involved in construction, the intention is simple – to prevent the ill health or death of construction and maintenance operatives among Scotland’s 30,000-plus construction businesses, while also allowing for the delivery of good design.
And this will, in part, be realised by replacing the appointment of a CDM-Coordinator with the appointment of a ‘principal designer’, with a remapped pre-construction phase.
To handle these new regulations the Monitor expects 28 per cent of Scottish construction firms will have to factor in any extra training or resource, while 35 per cent having plans to increase prices and offset the costs via clients.
The flip side is the new CDM landscape should encourage design innovation and excellence in a safer environment on every project, which is good news for everyone from architects to estimators, builders to labourers, electricians to site planners.
It also makes the construction industry safe as houses.
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