WHy is this important 

It is important to firstly request a fee proposal when building up the initial budget or providing your own fee proposal or tender submission so that these are already included.

The reason why “health and safety compliance requirements” are looked upon as a “pain in the neck” is that past projects have progressed without appropriate health and safety advisors who then later on find out they had legal obligations to fund which then had to be found from either the project contingency fund (which is not what this was for) or out of the profit margin.  

Historically you will find that many multi-million projects over a specific number of years often far exceed the original budget and time frame (you’ve seen this on the news) usually because of health and safety requirements or investigations, not originally accounted for, that have subsequently caused the financial costs and additional time, which in some cases caused a project to stop following a serious or fatal accident that will often have been foreseeable and could have been prevented.  

CDM now places that responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the clients, architects/designers and contractors who must now cooperate, coordinate and communicate with each other to ensure all of the UK health and safety legislative requirements (including CDM) are planned for as soon as they are appointed, noting that to offer or accept one of those duty holders without the health and safety advisor/consultant already named is a criminal offence.

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