I spent four hours creating a lighting presentation for the project today, and I am still not finished. It’s amazing how hard it is to estimate the time it’ll take to do a lighting presentation for a house that has around 30 rooms. There are 69 lines of different types of lighting and, to tell the truth, I still haven’t gotten all of the quotes back. The presentation set up takes time, then creating little snapshots of the furniture plan to introduce where the lighting goes, and then inserting pictures of the fittings themselves with the relevant information. I will work on it more tomorrow and hopefully be ready to present either in the afternoon or on Wednesday night.
I made some headway with the CDM Regulations contact I got from Polly. As the project is below 500 man hours, I don’t actually have to notify them. Also, as they are the only contractor, my client doesn’t have to appoint them officially. My contract stating that I am the principal designer is enough and I have checked that my insurance covers me on this. This is what the regulations state:
The overall responsibility of a Principal Designer is:
The principal designer must plan, manage and monitor the pre-construction phase and coordinate matters relating to health and safety during the pre-construction phase to ensure that, so far as is reasonably practicable, the project is carried out without risks to health or safety.
This is essentially what I am doing already, but I need to keep a record of how this is done and my thought processes to show I have covered Health and Safety in the design process. I also need to ensure that what I design is suitable and sufficient for the client’s needs/end use, and that it is designed to be able to be:
1. Built in a safe manner
2. Used in a safe manner
3. Maintained safely
4. Disassembled safely
The easiest way to do this is to fill in a Risk register. This is exactly what I have hired Julie for – she does this sort of register all the time. It’s definitely wise to have expert help at hand on a big project in a country new to me! 🙂