Unlimited users, never per-seat30+ modules, one account14-day trial, no cardQR clock-in, server timedOne flat monthly feeCyber Essentials PlusFree migration includedCDM 2015 built inUK hosted, UK supportInsurance expiry checked nightlyAndroid and iOS appNo minimums, cancel anytimeBookkeeping capture, by email99.97% uptimeExport everything, anytime
Start the 14-day trial
Book a demo→
Insight · Health and safety

When a job becomes notifiable,
and who tells the HSE.

Two thresholds, either of which triggers it, and a duty that sits with the client rather than with you. How to work out whether your job crosses them.

Published ·5 min read·Written by Unibuild

A project is notifiable under CDM 2015 if the construction work is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point, or if it exceeds 500 person days. Either limb triggers it. The client gives the notice, on form F10, as soon as practicable before the construction phase begins.

The test, stated exactly

Regulation 6 sets two alternative thresholds, and the structure matters because it is stated wrongly in a lot of places.

  1. Longer than 30 working days AND more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point on the project. Both parts of this limb have to be met. A six month job with a gang of eight never satisfies it.
  2. OR the work exceeds 500 person days. This limb stands alone. A short, heavily manned job can cross it without ever having 20 people on at once for 30 days.

So the connector between the two limbs is or, and the connector inside the first limb is and. Getting that the wrong way round is the commonest error, and it produces both false positives and false negatives.

Person days is simply the total of days worked by all workers on the construction phase. Ten people for fifty days is 500, which is not more than 500, so it does not cross. Ten people for fifty one days does.

Either threshold on its own is enough. Plenty of jobs are notifiable on person days while never coming close to twenty people on site at once.

Notifiable is not the same as needing a principal contractor

This is the confusion worth clearing, because the two questions get merged constantly and they have nothing to do with each other.

Needing a principal contractor turns on the number of contractors: more than one, or reasonably foreseeably more than one, and the duty attaches regardless of size or duration.

Being notifiable turns on duration and workforce size, and says nothing about how many contractors are involved.

Which produces four possible combinations, and all four occur. A small refurbishment with a builder and an electrician needs a principal contractor and is not notifiable, and that combination is extremely common. A long single-contractor job could in principle be notifiable without triggering the appointment requirement. Answer the two questions separately, in that order, and the paperwork follows. The appointment side is covered in when you become the principal contractor without being told.

Who notifies, and when

The client. Not the principal contractor, not the principal designer, and not you.

The notice must be given as soon as practicable before the construction phase begins, and it goes to the HSE, except on railway, nuclear or defence sites where it goes to the relevant authority instead.

Two practical consequences of the duty sitting with the client. First, on domestic and small commercial work the client frequently has no idea this is their job, so somebody has to tell them, and that somebody is usually you. Second, the notice is often prepared in practice by the principal contractor or principal designer on the client's behalf, which is fine, but it does not move the duty. It remains the client's.

What the notice does, and what it does not

It tells the regulator that a project of a certain size is happening, with the particulars listed in Schedule 1: the address, the client, the duty holders, the planned dates, the expected number of workers and contractors, and who is on site.

It has to be displayed in the construction site office in a comprehensible form, and updated if the particulars change materially. That display requirement is routinely forgotten, and it is one of the easiest things for an inspector to notice on arrival.

What it does not do is any of the things people fear or hope. It does not summon an inspection, it is not an application for anything, nothing has to be approved, and there is no fee. It also does not change any of your duties: a notifiable project carries exactly the same CDM obligations as a non-notifiable one of the same shape. Notification is administrative.

If it should have been notified and was not

It is a breach of regulation 6 by the client. The practical position for a contractor who realises mid-job is straightforward: raise it in writing with the client, and get it submitted. Late notification is considerably better than none, and a contemporaneous email showing you raised it is worth having if the matter is ever looked at.

The reason to bother, beyond the regulation, is that an unnotified notifiable project is an obvious signal to an inspector that the project's management arrangements were not thought about, which colours everything they look at afterwards.

Where this touches the platform

Honest about the limit first: Unibuild does not submit F10 notifications and does not decide notifiability, which is a judgment about a programme. Where it helps is on the inputs and on the evidence. The thresholds are questions about duration and about how many people are on site, and a system that records who was on site each day, with clock-ins carrying a date and a job, turns person days from an estimate into an arithmetic answer. The health and safety file, phase plan, permits and site records sit against the same job, so the CDM paperwork is one record rather than a folder. What you still need is somebody who looks at the programme before the job starts and asks the question, and that is a person.

The CDM 2015 guide The CDM 2015 checklist Timesheets and workforce Health and safety

Where to start, on Monday

Take each job on your board and answer two questions, in this order. Is there more than one contractor on it, which decides the appointment. And does it cross either notification threshold, which decides the F10.

For the second, the person days arithmetic is usually the quicker route: total the days you expect each trade to be on site and add them up. Where the answer is close to 500, treat it as notifiable, because the cost of notifying a job that turned out not to need it is nothing and the cost of the reverse is not.

Then, on any job that is notified, walk into the site office and check the notice is actually displayed.

Asked most often

The follow-up questions.

A working list of the duties either way is in the CDM 2015 checklist.

When does a construction project need an F10 notification?+
When the construction work is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point, or when it exceeds 500 person days. Either limb is enough on its own. Both parts of the first limb must be met together, which is the distinction most summaries get wrong.
Who submits the F10 to the HSE?+
The client, as soon as practicable before the construction phase begins. Not the principal contractor and not the principal designer, although either may prepare it on the client's behalf in practice, which does not move the duty. On railway, nuclear and defence sites the notice goes to the relevant authority instead of the HSE.
What are 500 person days?+
The total of days worked by all workers on the construction phase. Ten people for fifty days is exactly 500, which is not more than 500 and so does not cross the threshold; ten people for fifty-one days does. Many jobs are notifiable on person days while never having twenty workers on site at once for thirty days.
Is a notifiable project the same as one needing a principal contractor?+
No, and they are constantly confused. Needing a principal contractor turns on there being more than one contractor, regardless of size or duration. Being notifiable turns on duration and workforce size. A small job with a builder and an electrician needs a principal contractor and is usually not notifiable, which is a very common combination.
Does notifying a project trigger an HSE inspection?+
No. It is not an application, nothing is approved, there is no fee, and it does not summon anybody. It also does not change your duties: a notifiable project carries exactly the same CDM obligations as a non-notifiable one of the same shape. What it does require is that the notice is displayed in the site office in a comprehensible form and updated if particulars change materially.
What if a notifiable job was never notified?+
It is a breach of regulation 6 by the client. If you realise mid-job, raise it in writing with the client and get it submitted, because late notification is considerably better than none and a contemporaneous email showing you raised it is worth holding. An unnotified notifiable project also signals to an inspector that the management arrangements were not thought about.
Read next

More from Insights.

Winning work··5 min readGetting on a main contractor's approved listThe application is the easy half. What decides it is the evidence pack behind it, and what gets a firm quietly dropped afterwards is rarely the work.Read it →Winning work··6 min readSSIP, CHAS, Constructionline and what replaced PAS 91An acronym map with the money attached. Which schemes are health and safety only, which are full pre-qualification, what mutual recognition actually saves you, and why PAS 91 is no longer the answer.Read it →Tax and CIS··5 min readWhat counts as construction work under CISThe included list is wider than most firms assume and the excluded list catches out exactly the trades that read it. Plus the mixed contract rule, which decides more cases than either list.Read it →Tax and CIS··5 min readCIS monthly returns, the date and the penaltiesThe nineteenth, every month, whether or not you paid anybody. What the penalty ladder actually looks like, and the declaration on the return that carries more weight than the figures.Read it →Tax and CIS··5 min readEnd user statements, and what they switch offIt has to be in writing, it comes from your customer rather than from you, and without it the reverse charge applies by default. What the statement says and where it belongs.Read it →Health and safety··5 min readThe certificates that expire without anybody noticingInsurance, cards, plant inspections, training and first aid all run out on different dates, and nothing about your file changes on the day one of them does. What has to watch them.Read it →Health and safety··5 min readWhen an HSE inspector turns up on siteWhat they can do, what they ask to see and in what order, what a Notification of Contravention means, and what the visit can cost you at £188 an hour.Read it →Health and safety··5 min readRIDDOR, what has to be reported and by whenThree different clocks run on three different categories, and the one firms miss is the fifteen days, which counts from the accident rather than from the day you realised.Read it →Health and safety··5 min readWhich CSCS card, and who actually checks itSeven colours, different qualifications behind each, and a five year clock on most of them. What each card is for, and why it is not a legal requirement but still stops you at the gate.Read it →Choosing software··6 min readWhy WhatsApp fails as a site recordIt is the system most sites actually run on, and it works right up until somebody asks a question about March. Six specific failures, and the one that arrives when a person leaves.Read it →Choosing software··5 min readWhere spreadsheet job costing breaksNot when it gets complicated. When two people open it, when committed cost is not in it, and when the true position is a week old by the time anybody has assembled it.Read it →Choosing software··6 min readChoosing construction management software, and what to actually compareEvery product demos well. A buyer's checklist written to be useful even if you buy from somebody else, including the five questions vendors answer badly.Read it →Choosing software··5 min readXero for contractors, and where the accounts package stopsIt handles CIS properly and it is a good ledger. What it is not built to hold is the job: the measured schedule, the valuation, the retention and the cost you have committed but not yet been invoiced for.Read it →Choosing software··5 min readDocument control, and the revision everybody was working toBuilding to a superseded drawing is expensive, common, and almost never anybody being careless. What has to be true for the right revision to reach the person holding the tool.Read it →Getting paid··5 min readAn application for payment that does not come back rejectedFour reasons account for most rejections, and none of them is the price. What the document has to contain, what has to sit behind it, and the date that matters more than the total.Read it →Getting paid··5 min readGetting paid for variations you were told to get on withThe entitlement is rarely the problem. The evidence is. What stands up when the instruction was verbal, and the one email that changes the argument.Read it →Getting paid··5 min readWhen a missing notice hands you the moneyAn adjudication that asks nothing about what the work was worth, only whether the notices were served. What it wins, and the second adjudication that usually follows it.Read it →Getting paid··5 min readStopping work for non-payment, without breaching your contractA statutory right with narrow conditions and real leverage. What has to be true before you can use it, what the notice must say, and what walking off without one costs.Read it →Getting paid··5 min readCharging interest on a late payment, and the sums nobody claimsStatutory interest runs at eight per cent above base, and a fixed compensation sum sits on top of it that almost nobody asks for. Both are automatic entitlements rather than favours.Read it →Getting paid··6 min readWhat the Construction Act actually gives youSix rights that apply whether or not your contract mentions them, and whether or not anything was ever signed. What each one is, and where it stops.Read it →Subcontractors··6 min readVetting a subcontractor before you instruct themNine checks, what each one is actually protecting you from, and the two that firms skip and then discover matter. Most of it is twenty minutes and free.Read it →Reducing risk··6 min readCredit checking the firm above you, free, in twenty minutesEverything you need is public and none of it costs anything. Filing history, charges, director record, county court judgments, and the payment data large firms are now compelled to publish, including what they do with retention.Read it →Commercial··5 min readQuote or estimate, and which one binds youOne is an offer that becomes a fixed price the moment it is accepted. The other is an informed guess. Almost nobody says which they are sending, and the word at the top of the page is not what decides it.Read it →Health and safety··5 min readWhen you become the principal contractor without being toldThe duty attaches to a role, not to the size of the firm, and a second contractor arriving on site is enough to trigger it. What lands on you, and what happens when the client never appointed anybody.Read it →Choosing software··6 min readWhat construction software actually costsThe monthly figure is the part everyone compares and the smallest part of the bill. Setup, migration, the annual uplift, and the licences you ration because they are charged per person.Read it →Tax and CIS··8 min readThe VAT reverse charge, and who accounts for the VATFive years in and it still catches firms out on every second invoice. When it applies, when it does not, the written statement that switches it off, and the wording your invoice has to carry.Read it →Tax and CIS··7 min readReclaiming CIS deductions, and the money sitting with HMRCA limited company gets its deductions back through payroll rather than through its Corporation Tax return, and only if somebody files the right submission every month. Where the money goes, and how to stop it piling up.Read it →Commercial··7 min readThe gap between doing the work and having the moneyWages go out weekly, materials at thirty days, and the money comes back at sixty. Retention, CIS and the reverse charge each take a slice on the way. Why a job that made a profit can still run a firm out of cash.Read it →Getting paid··8 min readWhen the contractor above you will not payThe remedies run in a fixed order and each one costs more than the last. What to do first, what every step is worth, and the rung most disputes never get past.Read it →Getting paid··8 min readPay less notices, and the timetable behind themFour dates govern every interim payment in UK construction, and statute sets them rather than goodwill. What each one is, how to work them out on your own job, and what a late notice costs the party that served it.Read it →Getting paid··6 min readPay when paid, and why it does not bind youMaking your money conditional on somebody else being paid has been ineffective in UK construction since 1998. The clause is still written into contracts, still quoted down the phone, and still works on firms that do not know.Read it →Site team reviewing a risk assessment and method statement on a UK construction siteHealth and safety··7 min readRAMS that hold upWhat an inspector is actually looking for in a risk assessment and method statement, and the difference between a document that exists and one that is doing its job.Read it →Retention and the money that goes missing after practical completionCommercial··6 min readRetention, and the money that goes missing after practical completionWhere cash quietly disappears between the last valuation and the release of the second half of retention, and the four dates that decide whether you ever see it.Read it →Why field rollouts stall in week threeImplementation··6 min readWhy field rollouts stall in week threeMost site software is not rejected. It is quietly outlived by the paper route nobody switched off. What the firms that got it to stick did differently.Read it →
Next step

Turn person days into arithmetic.

Book a 45-minute demo → Read the CDM 2015 guide
Phone · UK hours
+44 7587 557546
Email
[email protected]
More writing
All insights
What it costs
Pricing
WhatsApp us, someone is available now