The CDM documents, and
what has to be in each one.

CDM 2015 asks for four documents: the pre-construction information, the construction phase plan, the health and safety file, and, on larger jobs, the F10 notification. The regulations say what each one has to contain and who has to produce it. They say nothing about how long it should be, what order it should run in, or what it should look like on the page. That is why there is no official template to download, and why almost every template you can download is either a blank page or a record of somebody else's job.

There is no official CDM template, and that is deliberate

Most people arrive at this subject looking for a blank form. There is not one. CDM 2015 is written as a set of duties and required contents, not as a set of forms. The Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on what to write, not a document to fill in.

The nearest thing to an exception is the F10, and it is not one. That is an online notification made on the HSE's own service. The form exists because the HSE has to receive the information in a fixed shape, not because your project has to keep a file in one.

The practical effect is that two compliant construction phase plans can look nothing alike. A plan for a three-week shopfit in an occupied unit and a plan for a nine-month steel frame both satisfy regulation 12. Neither would be much use as the other's starting point, and that is the difficulty a template cannot solve for you.

The four documents, and who writes each

The confusion worth clearing first is about ownership. Three of the four are the client's responsibility to make happen, and only one of those is the client's to write. The regulation number is given for each so you can check any of this yourself.

1. 01

   Pre-construction information

   Written by

   The client

   By when

   Before designers and contractors are appointed

   Regulation

   2(1), 4(4)

   Regulation 2 defines it as information in the client's possession, or reasonably obtainable, that is relevant to the work and proportionate to the risk. That last word does the work. This is not a standard pack. It is what you already know about this building that the people pricing and designing the job do not.

   The three headings in the definition are the project itself, how it will be planned and managed, and the health and safety hazards. HSE guidance in L153 fills those out:

   • A description of the project and the programme, including any dates that cannot move.
   • The client's own considerations and management requirements, such as access restrictions, working hours and the fact that half the building is still trading.
   • The existing environment and its hazards: the asbestos register, live services, ground conditions, contamination, structural instability, traffic routes.
   • Existing drawings, surveys and any previous health and safety file for the structure.
   • The significant design risks already identified and not yet eliminated.
2. 02

   Construction phase plan

   Written by

   The principal contractor, or the contractor where there is only one

   By when

   Before the site is set up

   Regulation

   12(1), 15(5)

   Every project needs one. Notifiable or not, two days or two years, one operative or two hundred. Where there is a principal contractor, regulation 12 puts it on them. Where there is only one contractor on the job, regulation 15(5) puts it on that contractor instead, to the same standard.

   The statutory contents are shorter than most people expect:

   • The health and safety arrangements for the construction phase.
   • The site rules.
   • Specific measures for any work that falls within Schedule 3.

   That is the whole list. Everything else in a typical plan is there because it is useful on site, not because regulation 12 asks for it. The plan is also the one document the regulations treat as live: it has to be reviewed, updated and revised as the job changes.

3. 03

   Health and safety file

   Written by

   The principal designer, then kept by the client

   By when

   Assembled as the job runs, handed over at the end

   Regulation

   12(5) to 12(8)

   Only required where more than one contractor is involved. On a genuine single-contractor job there is no principal designer, and so no file. This is the document people search for as the CDM file, and it is the one most often produced in the last fortnight from whatever anybody can still find.

   Regulation 12(5) asks for information likely to be needed during any subsequent project. Read that literally and it tells you who the reader is: not you, and not the building's occupier, but whoever alters or demolishes the structure in fifteen years. If the principal designer's appointment ends before the project does, the file passes to the principal contractor to finish.

4. 04

   F10 notification

   Sent by

   The client

   By when

   Before the site is set up

   Regulation

   6, Schedule 1

   Notifiable means one of two things. The first is work scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and to have more than 20 workers on site simultaneously at any point. The second is work scheduled to exceed 500 person days. Either one triggers it, and the first is the part most often read wrong, because both of its limbs have to be met. When a job becomes notifiable covers it at length.

   Schedule 1 lists fifteen particulars, from the site address to the number of contractors expected. The last one is a declaration by the client that they are aware of their duties, and it is the one people are surprised to find they have signed. The notice also has to be displayed where it can be read on site, and kept up to date.

A plan that was right when it was written and never revised is a record of a job that no longer exists.

What a construction phase plan has to address

Schedule 3 is the list that turns a generic plan into a specific one. Where any of these ten is on your job, the plan has to carry specific measures for it. Where none of them is, the plan is still required. It is simply shorter, and a shorter plan that is true beats a long one that was written for another site.

Six of those ten never appear on an ordinary refurbishment or fit-out. That is the use of the list. It tells you which parts of the plan have to be specific and evidenced, and leaves the rest to proportionate judgement.

The health and safety file is not the O&M manual

The two arrive at the same meeting, get bound in the same box and are routinely treated as one thing. They answer different questions for different readers, and a file that has been merged into an O&M manual has usually stopped doing its own job.

The O&M manual tells the person running the building how to operate and maintain it. The file tells the person altering or demolishing it what is going to hurt them. HSE guidance in L153 is direct about the contents:

• A brief description of the work carried out.
• Hazards that were not eliminated by design or construction, and how they were addressed.
• Key structural principles, such as bracing and sources of substantial stored energy.
• Hazardous materials used, such as lead paints and special coatings.
• How installed plant and equipment is to be removed or dismantled.
• Health and safety information about equipment for cleaning or maintaining the structure.
• The nature, location and markings of significant services, including underground cables.
• As-built drawings of the building, its plant and its equipment.

The same guidance is equally direct about what to leave out, which is the part that would shrink most of the files handed over this year. It should not carry the pre-construction information, the construction phase plan, construction phase risk assessments, method statements, COSHH assessments, contractual documents or accident statistics. None of that helps anybody planning future work, and burying eight useful pages inside four hundred is a way of losing them.

Whether a free template is enough

Often, yes. CITB publishes the CDM Wizard free for phone, tablet and desktop, and it will produce workable documents for a small project. L153 sets out what each document should contain in enough detail to write one from a blank page. Between the two, a straightforward job can be papered properly without anybody being paid to do it.

The limit is not the quality of the template. It is the size of the job. A template is enough for as long as one person is holding the whole project in their head, because that person is quietly supplying everything the template leaves out. Three things end that, usually in this order:

1. A second contractor arrives. Now there is a principal designer, a file to assemble, and information that has to be collected from people who do not work for you.
2. The plan needs revising. Regulation 12 requires it, and the revision is worth nothing until the version on site is the revised one.
3. Somebody asks for evidence. Not the documents, which you have, but proof that the arrangements in them were actually followed on the days in question.

None of that is a failing of the free tools. They are document generators, and they do that well. They were never meant to be the record of a running job.

What a downloaded plan does on a running job

The problem with a downloaded construction phase plan is not that it is generic on day one. Most plans start generic and get specific as the job is priced and programmed. The problem is that it is never touched again.

A plan written in a word processor and emailed round is revised by whoever happens to have it open. Six weeks in there is the version on the site noticeboard, the version in the principal contractor's sent items, and the version the subcontractor was issued at tender. One of the three is right, and the site is working to whichever is pinned up.

The file has the mirror image of the same problem. It is assembled at the end, from information generated over eighteen months by designers and subcontractors who have since moved on. The parts that cannot be found are the parts nobody recorded at the time. That is a document control problem rather than a CDM one, which is why a better template never fixes it.

Where to start, on Monday

Take the job you are on now and answer three questions in writing. Is there more than one contractor on it? Does it pass either notification limb? And does a construction phase plan exist that describes this site rather than a previous one?

The first answer tells you whether you owe a health and safety file and a principal designer appointment. The second tells you whether an F10 should already have gone. The third is the one that usually produces a silence, and the fix for it is an hour with the plan and the programme, not a better download.

If you want the duties rather than the documents, the CDM checklist runs through them regulation by regulation and prints. If you want the roles and the thresholds, the guide sets out who appoints whom and what each one owes.