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Procedure for Inspection Reports

Contractors Knowledge Base

Objective

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and Work at Height Regulations 2005 make it mandatory to inspect and produce reports of inspections of three areas of construction activities:

  • Working platforms including personal suspension equipment
  • Excavations which need support or to be battered back
  • Cofferdams and Caissons

These are dealt with below.

Any working platform or part thereof or any personal suspension equipment.

The frequency of such inspections and reports must be:

  1. Before being first brought into use.
  2. After substantial addition, dismantling or alteration.
  3. After any event which may have affected its strength or stability.
  4. At regular intervals of not more than 7 days.

An inspection of a working platform is only required where a person is liable to fall more than 2 metres from a place of work.

Persons in control of a scaffold must ensure that it is stable and of sound construction and that the relevant safeguards are in place before the scaffold is first used. No report is required for a mobile tower scaffold that remains in place for less than 7 days.

Where an inspection of a working platform or a part of it is required under 1. or 2. above then only one report is required in any 24-hour period.

Excavations which need support or to be battered back

The frequency of such inspections and reports is:

  1. Before work at the start of every shift.
  2. After any event likely to have affected its strength or stability.
  3. After any accidental fall of rock, earth or any material.

Cofferdams and Caissons.

The frequency of such inspections and reports is:

  1. Before work at the start of every shift.

The inspection and report must be completed by a competent person and the report handed to the person who requested the report within 24 hours of the inspection. The report should then be kept on site until the work is complete and then retained for three months at the office of the person for whom the inspection was carried out.

Administration

Competent persons must be nominated and a quantity of inspection reports supplied. A competent person might be an employee or a sub-contractor.

Procedure

Working Platforms, excavations and cofferdams and caissons.

  1. The competent person will inspect the platform, the excavation or the cofferdam or caisson and complete the report form whenever requested to do so by the senior company representative on site. This will be at the intervals specified in the regulations.
  2. Findings will be reported to the senior company representative on site and the report form will be given to him.
  3. The senior company representative on site will instigate any remedial action highlighted in the report.
  4. The report will be kept on site and a copy sent to the chief executive.
  5. Any major hazard found during the examination must be reported to the chief executive immediately by telephone.