This page provides guidance to help those in the entertainment industry understand what they need to do to comply with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM).
What you should know
CDM is not about creating unnecessary bureaucracy. It is about securing the health, safety and welfare of those carrying out construction work and protecting others who the work may affect from harm.
With this principle in mind, this guidance illustrates how CDM roles and duties can be applied to existing common management arrangements and processes in the 4 main industry sub-sectors:
- TV/film and broadcasting
- theatre and performing arts
- live events (festivals, music, sport, cultural events)
- exhibitions/trade fairs and conferences
This will also help others in the industry, with different management arrangements, to determine what they need to do to comply with CDM.
You can find worked examples of applying CDM regulations across the entertainment industry in the National Archives. They show what proportionate compliance with CDM might look like in practice.
This guidance should be read in conjunction with the HSE publication Managing health and safety in construction.
Application of the CDM Regulations
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations apply to all construction projects, including those carried out in the entertainment industry. A project includes all the planning, design and management tasks until the end of the construction phase, for example building, fitting out and taking down temporary structures for TV, film and theatre productions and live events.
In the context of an event or production, you have the flexibility to treat the whole event or production as one project, for example the build and takedown phases combined. Alternatively, you can treat construction activity as separate projects within an event or production.
CDM applies to construction projects at creative arts training establishments but, in practice, this should involve little more than what they normally do in managing health and safety risks.
CDM makes the general duties of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 more specific. They complement the general Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations and integrate health and safety into the management of construction projects.
The aim is for construction health and safety considerations to be treated as a normal part of an event or production's management and development, not an afterthought or bolt-on extra. Together with wider measures to ensure a safe event or production, the objective of CDM is to reduce the risk of harm to those that have to build, fit out, use, maintain and take down structures.
The key principles of CDM will be familiar to those already managing risks effectively as part of an event or production. The key principles are:
- eliminate or control risks so far as reasonably practicable
- ensure work is effectively planned
- appoint the right people and organisations at the right time
- make sure everyone has the information, instruction, training and supervision they need to carry out their jobs safely and without damaging health
- have systems in place to help parties cooperate and communicate with each other and coordinate their work
- consult workers with a view to securing effective health, safety and welfare measures
Any actions you take to comply with CDM should always be proportionate to the risks involved.
Find out more
- CDM roles and duties in the entertainment industry
- HSE and local authority regulators
- Voluntary organisations
Construction phase plan
For projects involving more than one contractor, it is the principal contractor's duty to ensure the plan is prepared.
For single-contractor projects, the CDM contractor must do this.
Proportionate to the scale and complexity of the work and risks involved, the plan must set out:
- the health and safety management arrangements for any construction work
- the construction site rules, and
- where applicable, specific measures concerning work involving the particular risks listed in Schedule 3 of the CDM Regulations (on legislation.gov.uk) – work near high-voltage power lines, work at height and work involving the assembly and disassembly of heavy prefabricated components
The information may be combined with or exist as part of other documents, for example an event management plan, providing this does not result in the health and safety information being lost or buried. What matters is that people can find the information they need easily and the information is clearly identified as the construction phase plan.
CDM health and safety file
The CDM client must ensure that the principal designer prepares a health and safety file when a project involves more than one contractor. This will require co-operation from others in the project team.
The file should only contain information about significant and/or unusual risks that is likely to be needed during any subsequent project, for example the next event/production. The type of information could include how a novel structure has to be dismantled in a particular sequence to ensure it remains stable during dismantling.
The file should contain enough detail to allow the likely risks to be identified and addressed by those carrying out the work and be proportionate to those risks. It shouldn't include pre-construction information, contractual documents etc.
A proportionate approach to routine, standard set and temporary structure builds may simply be to say there are no unusual or significant features – in terms of its design or construction methods.
Similar to a construction phase plan, the file information may be combined with other documents providing that this does not result in the health and safety information being lost or buried. What matters is that people can find the information they need easily.
Notification of a CDM project
Notify the construction project to HSE if construction work:
- lasts longer than 30 working days and has more than 20 workers working simultaneously on it, or
- exceeds 500 person days