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- In BIMpedia
Health and safety information has its own legal duties and its own people: in the UK, under CDM 2015, the client provides pre-construction information, designers manage design risks, and the principal designer prepares the health and safety file. What those duties often lack is an information plan. That is where the information manager helps.
How designers find and design out hazards is in Designing out hazards; what the file contains and how it is handed over is in Health and safety information at handover. The design risk register is described in the Pedia. This lesson is about making all of that findable.
Write it into the requirements
Treat safety information as deliverables in the EIR, with the same four answers as any other: what (significant design risks, residual risks, hazardous materials, access and replacement information), who (which designer or contractor), in what form (register rows, element properties, documents) and when (each stage, not only at completion).
| Information | Produced by | Lives in | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-construction information | Client, with its advisers | A published container in the CDE | Before tender |
| Significant design risks | Each designer | The risk register, with element references | From stage 2, updated at each stage |
| Residual risks for operation | Designers, then contractors | Properties on the elements and assets concerned | Stage 4, confirmed as built |
| Hazardous materials | Contractor, specialists | Asset data and a dedicated container | As installed |
| Health and safety file | Principal designer (UK) | Planned containers plus asset data | Built through the project, accepted at handover |
Nobody plans the health and safety file. In the last week before completion, the principal designer asks every consultant for "anything safety related". Fourteen PDFs arrive, mostly method statements. The operator receives a 900-page file in which the one warning that matters (a fragile roof light over the plant room) is on page 612.
The EIR says residual risks are properties on the elements concerned and rows in the register with element IDs, reviewed at every stage gate. The fragile roof light carries its warning in the model and in the asset data. At handover the file is a short index of containers, and the warning appears in the CAFM whenever a work order is raised for the plant room roof.
For a new library, map each item to who produces it, when, where it lives in the CDE or model, and who receives it.
- Work at height to maintain the atrium glazing.
- Lead paint found on retained steelwork.
- The method for replacing the main air handling unit.
- Isolation points for gas and electricity.
- A buried high-voltage cable on the site boundary.
Key takeaways
- Write safety information into the requirements like any deliverable: what, by whom, in what form, at which milestone.
- Designers' significant and residual risks are linked to the elements they concern, so they travel with the model to the contractor and the operator.
- The health and safety file is planned as containers and asset data from the start, and checked at each milestone, not compiled at practical completion.
- Some safety information is also security-sensitive; agree where the two meet.
Your notes
Related tool
Build an asset register from an IFC and check it on the model: data quality in colour, a data sheet per asset, rooms and systems, a first maintenance plan and tag labels.
Open Asset Register Builder →