Over the past two years Health and Safety Solutions have embarked on delivering CDM Awareness courses to Design Practices throughout London.

The uptake of these 1 day CPD events has been steadily strong throughout this period. Which is surprising given the current climate.

It's still apparent that Designers still have not grasped the fundamentals of CDM specifically relating to their duties and the clients under the CDM regs .

Basic points such as, what is classed as a CDM notifiable project etc were answered with great difficulty.

Generally Architectural practices had the better understanding, but they were not fully aware of their importance when promoting CDM.

CDM Coordinator s will have an increasingly difficult task in promoting their services throughout the industry when key players do not fully understand the role. The CDMC should add value and can offer up cost savings as part of the process, but most importantly can assist in the design development to ensure health and safety is considered in both the buildability aspects and the eventual operation and maintenance. The new CDM regs have reduced paperwork and we have encouraged designers to use drawings as ameans of communicating design risk rather than the Design Risk Assessment process which is often seen as generic. Designers still use this format to (what they perceive) as meeting their duties, however most DRA's that we've seen are generic and talk about Construction risks as opposed to design and maintenance risks.

There is still a huge step change that is required throughout the industry in how CDM is viewed. in the meantime as CDM consultants we should be doing what we can to educate the uneducated.