An analysis of health and safety provisions in NEC contracts

The 2015 edition of the Construction (Design and Management) (CDM) Regulations imposes statutory duties on the project client and other project supply chain members. It is the client’s statutory duty to make and implement arrangements for effective management of health and safety (H&S) on the project. It also created two statutory duty holders that the client must appoint to coordinate H&S management. To manage the performance of the duty holders effectively, the client must enter into a contract with each of them that imposes their statutory duties as contractual obligations. This paper critically analyses two representative contracts in the NEC family of contracts to provide guidance on their H&S provisions and pointers to possible review in future editions. An important finding is that the contracts state the H&S duties in very general terms with the expectation that users will draft the details on the CDM duties as part of the scope contract document. This approach has the advantage of flexibility to accommodate international use of the contracts. It is recommended that the promoters consider the alternative of capturing appropriate CDM-related duties as a standard optional clause for adoption by UK users. Suggestions are made as to the terms in such an optional clause.