CONSTRUCTION REGULATION 5 and 7: CLIENTS and CONTRACTOR DUTIES
This is very important for the designer to take cognizance off. The reason for its importance is because of the fact that most of these duties, surround the duties of the Architect, and by knowing pre-and post-obligations of role players surrounding your responsibilities, is as important as the letter of the law.
1. The client must prepare a baseline risk assessment for the construction work project, and
thereafter prepare site specific health and safety specification for the project.
2. The client must then provide the Architect with the health and safety specification, and must
further ensure that the Architect takes the prepared health and safety specification into
consideration during the design stage.
3. The client has the duty to ensure that the Architect carries out all responsibilities
contemplated in regulation 6, which stipulates the Architects duties.
4. The client must also include the health and safety specification in the tender documents,
and ensure that potential principal contractors submitting tenders have made adequate provision
for the cost of health and safety measures.
5. The Contractor then, after being awarded the contract, must develop a health and safety plan
that clearly stipulates how he is to ensure adherence to the health and safety specification that
was provided to him, and the client must approve this health and safety plan in order for it to
be valid.
6. The client must also make sure that the contractor he wishes to appoint has the necessary
competencies and resources to carry out the construction work safely and is registered and in
good standing with the compensation fund.
7. The client must ensure that periodic health and safety audits and document verification are
conducted at intervals mutually agreed upon between the principal contractor and any contractor,
but at least once every 30 days. Thereafter a copy of the health and safety audit report must be
provided to the principal contractor within seven days after the audit.
8. Where changes are brought about to the design or construction work, the client must make
sufficient health and safety information and appropriate resources available to the principal
contractor to execute the work safely.
9. The client and the contractor must ensure that the health and safety file is kept on site and
maintained by the responsible parties.
10. Where a client requires additional work to be performed because of a design change or an error
in construction due to the actions of the client, the client must ensure that sufficient safety
information and appropriate additional resources are available to execute the required work
safely.
Architects note: It seldom happens that the client provides the Architect with a health and safety specification. The problem arises when the law clearly stipulates that the Architect must take this health and safety specification into consideration during the design phase. The responsibility falls on both the client and the Architect here, and should the client not provide the health and safety specification, the Architect must insist on being provided with such a health and safety specification. The duties of the client here should be seen as an extra service you can provide, or if you don’t want to provide it, to direct him in the best direction possible. It opens more possibilities for the Architect, seeing that he now also ensures and assists the client with his duties. This creates trust on the clients’ side towards his designer, for the mere fact that the client is protected by virtue of his designers’ knowledge and due diligence.