Construction Firms 'Ready For Safety Rules'

Scottish builders’ confidence is up again, ahead of health and safety changes coming into effect this month.

Confidence within the Scottish construction industry has reached a new record high of +29, up three points on the equivalent for the end of 2014.

The Scottish Construction Monitor is a quarterly survey of the membership of the Scottish Building Federation (SBF).

The SBF has issued its latest report just days before the entry into force of new regulations which will impose significant new health and safety responsibilities on domestic building projects.

The 2015 Construction (Design and Management) regulations (CDM 2015) are due to enter into force on Monday April 6.

Minimum requirements concerning health and safety management for domestic projects are the main change.

The positive rating recorded by the Construction Monitor means that industry confidence has now been rated positive for seven consecutive quarters since the second quarter of 2013.

94% of respondents were either fully or partially aware of the new regulations and two thirds said they felt either fully or somewhat prepared for their entry into force.

The majority of respondents also have previous experience of drafting or contributing to construction phase plans and of providing site inductions and on-site welfare facilities for their workers.

These are some of the main new responsibilities that contractors will have to assume on behalf of domestic clients under the new regulations.

Almost two thirds of respondents said they thought the new regulations would create additional costs while almost one third thought they would make health and safety compliance more complicated. Overall, 60% thought the impact on their business would be minor while a further 11% thought the impact would be significant and almost one quarter remained unsure what the impact would be.

Commenting on the survey results, Scottish Building Federation Managing Director Vaughan Hart said:

“It’s good to see confidence within the Scottish construction industry up once again for the first three months of 2015. We continue to monitor the industry’s performance carefully since certain sectors of the industry still offer significant scope for improvement over the coming months. In order to be sustainable, it’s important that the industry’s recovery is suitably balanced across all sectors."