CDM 2015 placed the bulk of construction safety duty on the principal contractor. On a busy housing scheme that obligation lands in many places at once. Method statements need to be live, not filed. RAMS need to reflect what is actually being done on site this week, not what was assumed in tender. Operative competence needs to be evidenced for every subcontractor that comes through the gate. And the whole record needs to survive scrutiny if anything goes wrong.
Principal contractors carrying that load do not need their subcontractors making it heavier. They need subcontractors who arrive with their CDM evidence already organised, in the format that drops cleanly into the principal contractor’s pre-construction file and into the construction phase plan.
The Globe Group operates that way as a matter of course. Every business in the group, roofing, scaffold, civils and safety netting, holds the accreditations the CDM file expects, including CHAS at Premium Plus or equivalent tier, Constructionline at the higher levels, and trade-specific competence in CISRS, NASC, FASET and CITB. Operatives carry CSCS at the relevant grade. Plant operators carry CPCS or NPORS. The documentation is current, not historical.
More importantly, the documentation arrives ahead of the work. RAMS for each scope are sent to the principal contractor in the format and on the lead time agreed at pre-start. Plant inspections, weekly site inspections and signed handover certificates follow a consistent template across the group’s trades. If the principal contractor asks for evidence on a specific operative, it can be produced in minutes rather than days.
This matters most in the moments principal contractors actually worry about. An accident on site triggers a sequence of evidential demands. The site is paused. The HSE may attend. The insurer expects the documentation that should have prevented the incident. At that point the question is not whether the documentation exists. It is whether the documentation can be produced quickly, in order, and tells a coherent story.
Group governance means the group’s businesses operate to a shared documentation standard. When a Globe scaffold inspection is filed, it has the same fields as the previous one. When a fall protection install is signed off, the same competence record sits behind it. When a groundworks operative starts on site, the same induction and verification sequence has been completed. For a principal contractor, that consistency is the difference between a CDM file that holds up under inspection and one that exposes gaps.
There is also a practical benefit in pre-construction. Principal contractors writing the construction phase plan benefit from subcontractors who can articulate the residual risks within their package clearly, in plain language, and propose realistic controls. RAMS written defensively in compliance language are harder to use on site than RAMS written to be read by foremen at induction.
Globe Group teams write RAMS for the site, not for the file. They are practical documents that survive contact with the actual sequencing on the ground. They are also iterated when conditions change, rather than treated as fixed at the start of the package.
For developers and principal contractors, the commercial value of all of this is that CDM compliance stops being a thing they have to enforce. It becomes a thing the subcontractors arrive already doing. That frees the principal contractor’s time for the harder problems, the ones that genuinely need active management.
It also reduces the residual liability the developer carries. Even in a fully delegated CDM structure, the developer holds duties that depend on the principal contractor doing their job. When the supply chain is making that job easier rather than harder, the entire chain of duty is better discharged.
Talk to the Globe Group To discuss CDM compliance support for your principal contractor obligations on your scheme, contact the Globe Group on 01223 890727 or email enquiries@theglobegroup.co.uk.
