Construction Phase Plan Example (UK)

Most people searching for a construction phase plan example want to see what "proportionate" actually looks like — because the guidance says the plan should match the project's risks, and then every template they find runs to sixty pages.

So this is a worked example for a small job: a six-week single-storey rear extension, four contractors, no notifiable threshold reached. Each section shows what goes in it, the CDM 2015 requirement behind it, and roughly how much detail is enough at this scale.

What the regulation actually demands

CDM 2015 Regulation 12(1): "During the pre-construction phase, and before setting up a construction site, the principal contractor must draw up a construction phase plan, or make arrangements for a construction phase plan to be drawn up."

Regulation 12(2) sets the content requirement in full: the plan "must set out the health and safety arrangements and site rules taking account, where necessary, of the industrial activities taking place on the construction site and, where applicable, must include specific measures concerning work which falls within one or more of the categories set out in Schedule 3."

So there are two limbs, not one. The first — arrangements and site rules — is open: there is no prescribed structure and no minimum length, and the level of detail is a matter of proportion to the project. The second limb is not open. Where any of the ten categories of work in Schedule 3 applies to your project, specific measures for it must be in the plan; Schedule 3's own enabling line reads "Regulation 12(2)". Beyond those two limbs, the layout and headings are convention.

Regulation 12(4) adds the ongoing duty: throughout the project the principal contractor "must ensure that the construction phase plan is appropriately reviewed, updated and revised from time to time so that it continues to be sufficient to ensure that construction work is carried out, so far as is reasonably practicable, without risks to health or safety." A plan written once and filed has not met 12(4).

A jurisdiction note. Regulation 3 applies CDM 2015 "in Great Britain". Northern Ireland has its own instrument — the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, in operation since 1 August 2016 — so if the project is in NI, work from that rather than the regulation numbers below.

The worked example

1. Project description

What goes here: the address, a one-paragraph description of the work, the start and finish dates, and who holds each CDM role.

Project: Single-storey rear extension, 24 m², to an occupied domestic property. Duration: 6 weeks, 12 Jan – 20 Feb 2026. Client: domestic client, named in the project file. Under Regulation 7(1) the client duties "in regulations 4(1) to (7) and 6" are carried out by the principal contractor on a project with more than one contractor. Other client provisions are unaffected — Regulation 5(3) and (4) simply "does not apply to a domestic client" under Regulation 7(3). Principal designer: the appointed architectural practice. Principal contractor: our firm. Contractors: groundworks, brickwork, roofing, M&E first and second fix. Notifiable: No. Regulation 6(1): a project is notifiable if the work is scheduled to "(a) last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point in the project; or (b) exceed 500 person days." Limb (a) is conjunctive — and, not or. Counting the Saturday shifts in section 3, the duration passes the 30-working-day half of limb (a) — but with four contractors sequenced to avoid overlap the site never approaches 20 workers simultaneously, so limb (a) is not met, and the person-day total on a crew that size stays well inside limb (b). Both counts belong in the project file, not just the conclusion.

Real names, addresses and contact numbers go in each of these fields — they are described by role here so the example can be read as a structure.

Half a page. On a domestic project note explicitly which client duties have moved and to whom, because that is a live question if anything goes wrong — and note that limb (a) of the notification test is conjunctive, so a long job with a small crew is not notifiable on duration alone.

2. Management of the work

What goes here: who is in charge, how contractors are appointed and coordinated, and how the work is monitored.

Site management: a named site supervisor, on site daily, with a mobile contact number given to every contractor. Contractor appointment: each contractor provides RAMS, employers' liability insurance certificate and CSCS card details before mobilisation. Reviewed and recorded by the site supervisor before first access. Coordination: trades sequenced to avoid overlap in the excavation zone. Weekly review of the two-week look-ahead with each contractor. Monitoring: weekly documented site walk. Findings logged and closed out with the responsible contractor. Induction: every operative inducted before first access — site layout, welfare, emergency arrangements, specific hazards below.

This is the section that satisfies the "arrangements" half of Regulation 12(2), and it is where thin plans are thinnest. Naming a person and a frequency is what makes it real.

3. Site rules and arrangements

Access: via side gate only. Gate locked outside working hours. No access through the occupied house. Hours: 08:00–17:00 Mon–Fri, 08:00–13:00 Sat. No Sunday working. PPE: hard hat, hi-vis, safety footwear as a minimum across the whole site; task PPE per RAMS. Welfare: portable toilet and washing unit on the driveway from day one; rest area with kettle and seating in the site cabin. Occupied property: householder and family remain in occupation. Hoarding between the works and the garden. No plant left running unattended. Daily brief to the householder on the following day's work. Emergency: muster point at the front driveway. Named first aider on site during working hours. Nearest A&E identified by name and address in the site file.

4. Arrangements for controlling significant site risks

What goes here: the actual hazards on this job and what is being done about them. This is the section that carries the plan.

Excavation (1.2 m footings, adjacent to existing foundations). Battered sides; no entry to unsupported excavation over 1.2 m. Services scanned and confirmed before breaking ground; CAT scan record retained. Edge protection and covers overnight. Buried services. Gas and electric entries confirmed on the eastern elevation. Hand-dig within 500 mm of marked runs. Work at height (roof, 3.1 m eaves). Scaffold with double guardrail and toe board, erected and inspected by a competent scaffolder, inspection record before first use and weekly thereafter. Manual handling. Blocks delivered to point of use; mechanical handling for lintels. Occupied premises / public interface. Hoarding to garden boundary; deliveries banked; no materials stored on the pavement. Dust and noise. On-tool extraction for cutting; no cutting before 08:00.

Now run the Schedule 3 test, because Regulation 12(2) makes it part of the content requirement rather than a matter of judgement about length. Schedule 3 lists ten categories of "work involving particular risks" — work near high voltage power lines, work on wells, underground earthworks and tunnels, diving, caisson work, explosives, risk of drowning, ionising radiation in a designated area, and the assembly or dismantling of heavy prefabricated components. Eight of those simply do not arise on a domestic extension. Two have to be reasoned about, and the reasoning belongs on the record:

Category 1 covers work putting workers at risk of "burial under earthfalls, engulfment in swampland or falling from a height, where the risk is particularly aggravated by the nature of the work or processes used or by the environment at the place of work or site." The qualifier is what decides it. A 1.2 m battered excavation with no entry permitted below an unsupported face, and roof work at 3.1 m eaves off an inspected scaffold with double guardrail and toe board, are ordinary construction risks controlled by ordinary means — not risks aggravated by the nature of the work, the process or the environment. Category 1 is assessed as not applying, and that assessment is recorded here rather than left implicit.

Category 2 covers work with chemical or biological substances "constituting a particular danger to the health or safety of workers or involving a legal requirement for health monitoring." Cutting and chasing generates respirable crystalline silica; on this job it is controlled by on-tool extraction and the exposures do not reach the threshold at which health surveillance becomes a legal requirement. If the scope changed to prolonged dry cutting, this would need revisiting under Regulation 12(4).

If any category does apply on your project, specific measures for it must be set out in this section — that is the second limb of Regulation 12(2), not good practice. Leaving it out is a defect in the plan even if the rest of the plan is excellent.

5. The health and safety file

Information for the file collected as the work proceeds: as-built drawings, the structural engineer's calculations, the specification and location of the new consumer unit and buried services, and the roof covering and insulation specification. Passed to the principal designer at completion.

Under Regulation 12(5) the principal designer prepares the file; Regulation 12(7) requires the principal contractor to provide relevant information for it. Two or three lines is enough here — the file itself is a separate document.

How long should it be

The above is around four to five pages including a site plan. For a six-week extension with four contractors, that is proportionate.

Scaling up: a twelve-month commercial fit-out with thirty contractors will run considerably longer, mostly in sections 2 and 4 — more interfaces to coordinate, more hazards to control. But the growth should be in substance, not in boilerplate. A plan that grows by adding generic policy text has got bigger without getting better, and HSE's guidance is consistent that arrangements should be proportionate to the risks.

What makes a plan fail

Generic. If the plan would read identically on a different site, it has not addressed this site's risks.
Written after work started. Regulation 12(1) requires it before setting up the site.
Never revised. Regulation 12(4) requires ongoing review. Scope changes, sequence changes, a new hazard discovered — each is a trigger.
Nobody has read it. A plan the contractors have not seen cannot govern their work, and Regulation 15(3) requires them to comply with the parts relevant to them.
Policy padding. Thirty pages of general company policy with two pages of site-specific content is worse than five pages that are entirely site-specific, because the useful part is buried.

Using it

To build your own, work through the sections above against your project and delete what does not apply. Our construction phase plan template generates a blank five-section structure aligned to Regulation 12 that you can fill in and download.

For the full guide to what the plan must contain, see our construction phase plan guide. For the information that should feed into it, see our pre-construction information guide, and for the document it hands off to, our health and safety file guide. For whether your project is notifiable, see our CDM F10 notification guide.

SubComply is being built for the subcontractor-compliance layer underneath the plan — the RAMS, insurance certificates and card details each contractor has to provide before mobilisation, tracked in one place. Join the waitlist to be notified when it launches.

Sources

This guide is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The worked example is illustrative and must not be used as a substitute for a plan prepared for your own project. For project-specific CDM compliance questions, consult a qualified health and safety professional.

Last reviewed: 4 November 2026