Choose the right approach for you
Every company has different compliance challenges. Shape your ideal safety solution from three flexible options.
Opus Safety Partnership
Full-service consultancy and business risk management to improve safety standards for the long term.
Standalone compliance services
Targeted audits, surveys, assessments and staff training to keep you in line with current health and safety laws.
Friction-free software
Workflows, checklists, reporting and e-learning that streamline safety from start to finish.
Choose the right approach for you
Every company has different compliance challenges. Shape your ideal safety solution from three flexible options.
Full Health Surveillance
An occupational health assessment of a full fitness for work is to establish if that employee is fit to carry out their day to day duties within their job role.
Health Surveillance Medicals
A health surveillance system can highlight hazards in your workplace that are not properly being controlled. Opus help you to reduce these hazards.
Tailored Health Surveillance
Tailored surveillance not only ensures compliance with regulatory requirements but also promotes the overall well-being of employees, creating a safer work environment.
Construction Phase Plans
Schedule 3 of CDM 2015 details work activities with elevated risks, needing special attention.
Chemical and Biological Risks
Address risks from hazardous substances requiring health monitoring.
Environmental and Height Dangers
Focus on risks from work in challenging environments and at heights.
Ionising Radiation and Power Lines
Implement controls for work involving ionising radiation and near high voltage lines.
Underground and Explosive Work
Specific measures for work in tunnels and with explosives are vital for safety.
Why Testing is Important
Schedule 3 Work involving particular risks.
- Work which puts workers at risk from chemical or biological substances constituting a particular danger to the safety or health of workers or involving a legal requirement for health monitoring.Work which puts workers at risk of burial under earth-falls, engulfment in swampland or falling from a height, where the risk is particularly aggravated by the nature of the work or processes used or by the environment at the place of work or site.
- Work with ionising radiation requiring the designation of controlled or supervised areas under regulation 16 of the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999.
- Work near high voltage power lines.
- Work exposing workers to the risk of drowning.
- Work on wells, underground earthworks, and tunnels.
- Work carried out by divers having a system of air supply.
- Work carried out by workers in caissons with a compressed air atmosphere.
- Work involving the use of explosives.
- Work involving the assembly or dismantling of heavy prefabricated components.
For single contractor projects, the contractor must ensure the construction phase plan is also drawn up.
When considering what information to include in the Construction Phase Plan, the emphasis is that it: is relevant to the project and has sufficient detail to clearly set out the arrangements, site rules and special measures needed to manage the construction phase. But it is still proportionate to the scale and complexity of the project and the risks involved.
The plan should not include documents that get in the way of a clear interpretation of what is needed to manage the construction phase, such as generic risk assessments, records of how decisions were reached or detailed safety method statements.
The following list of topics should be considered when drawing up the plan though not exhaustive:
- A description of the project such as key dates and details of key members of the project team.
- The management of the work including:
- The health and safety aims for the project.
- The site rules.
- Arrangements to ensure cooperation between project team members.
- And coordination of their work, eg regular site meetings.
- Arrangements for involving workers.
- Site induction.
- Welfare facilities.
- Fire and emergency procedures.
- The control of any of the specific site risks listed in schedule 3 where they are relevant to the work involved.
What must duty holders do?
The client
The client must ensure a construction phase plan is drawn up before the construction phase begins. For projects involving more than one contractor, the principal contractor is responsible for establishing the plan or for making arrangements for it to be drawn up.
The designer
The designer has no specific duty in relation to the construction phase plan. However, the designer must take all reasonable steps to provide with the design sufficient information about aspects of the design to help contractors (including principal contractors) to comply with their duties.
The principal designer
The principal designer must help the principal contractor to prepare the construction phase plan by providing any relevant information they hold.
The principal contractor
For projects involving more than one contractor, the principal contractor must take the lead in preparing, reviewing, updating, and revising the construction phase plan.
They must draw up the plan or make arrangements for it to be drawn up during the pre-construction phase and before the construction site is set up.
The contractor
For projects involving more than one contractor, the contractor must follow the parts of the construction phase plan prepared by the principal contractor that are relevant to their work.
*Source of information: Managing health and safety in construction L153 Published 2015
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Your partner in compliance
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Opus Safety Partnership
Everything you need for a safer workplace – in one end-to-end service. A customised compliance programme. Ongoing support. And a dedicated H&S expert, whenever you need them.
Business risk analysis
Pinpoint compliance issues and map out improvement measures.
Policies and processes
Review, upgrade and standardise safety documents and procedures.
Work-saving software
Action key H&S data and deliverables with one intuitive tool.
Strategic guidance
Maintain excellence with practical help and long-term risk prevention.
Secure, compliant and 100% confident
Our employee training programmes and one-off risk assessments, surveys and audits deliver peace of mind for your people – and a safer way forward for you.
Operate on the right side of regulations
Avoid penalties and exceed your legal requirements with expert-led risk assessments, audits and surveys that go beyond the bare minimum.