Last edited 13 May 2024

Client responsibilities

1 Definition of a client
2 Client responsibilities under the CDM Regulations
3 Client responsibilities under the Building Safety Act 2022
4 Related articles on Designing Buildings

[edit] Definition of a client

The CIOB Code of practice for project management defines a client as the 'Entity, individual or organisation commissioning and funding the project, directly or indirectly.'

Under the Building Regulations, a ‘client’ is ‘any person for whom a project is carried out.’ There is a special sub-category of client called a ‘domestic client’, which means ‘a client for whom a project is carried out which is not in the course or furtherance of a business of that client.’ Domestic clients are treated differently because, rather like consumers, they are generally inexpert buyers of design and building services and are thus deserving of protection.. Domestic clients still have responsibilities or duties, though they may be less onerous than those of non-domestic clients.

Another common term for a client with responsibilities in construction, is a duty holder. A duty holder is any person who is appointed to be responsible for a specific aspect of a building or project. Their responsibility is usually to maintain an overall standard and quality that is conducive to good health and safety and quality of work. The duty holder therefore has a duty to their employers, their colleagues and ultimately the building users and passers-by. They are key roles (whether fulfilled by individuals or organisations) that are assigned specific responsibilities at particular phases of the building life cycle.

Building Regulations identifies dutyholders as persons (i.e., individuals or corporate bodies) with legal duties of which there are potentially five; the designer, the contractor, the principal designer, the principal contractor and the client. The client is rarely a single person, even on relatively small projects. Within the client, there are likely to be a number of groups and individuals with an interest in, or control over the project. Clients may also sometimes referred to as:

other terms might include

Investment decision maker (IDM).
Senior responsible owner (SRO).
Project sponsor (PS).
Project board.
User panels.
Champions (perhaps heads of department).
Project manager.

See also the article Client for building design and construction

[edit] Client responsibilities under the CDM Regulations

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM Regulations) are intended to ensure that health and safety issues are properly considered during a project’s development so that the risk of harm to those who have to build, use and maintain structures is reduced.

Under the CDM 2015 regulations, there are six defined duty holders who are charged with a commitment to the control of construction health and safety risk management, one of which is the client. The client as a dutyholder must make suitable arrangements for managing a project, including making sure that:

Other dutyholders are appointed as appropriate and
Sufficient time and resources are allocated.

They must also make sure that:

Relevant information is prepared and provided to other dutyholders;
The principal designer and principal contractor carry out their duties, and
Welfare facilities are provided.

Domestic clients' duties are normally transferred to the contractor on a single contractor project or to the principal contractor on a project involving more than one contractor. Alternatively, domestic clients can choose to have a written agreement with the principal designer to carry out the client duties.

Commercial clients, are not necessarily experts in construction and so they are not required to take an active role in managing work. However, they are required to make suitable arrangements for managing the project so that health,safety and welfare is secured. It is suggested that clients could prepare a clear client's brief as a way of setting out these arrangements. Arrangements should focus on the needs of the particular project and should be proportionate to the size of, and risks arising from the work.

Very broadly, clients' duties include:

Ensuring other dutyholders are appointed, that is, designers (including a principal designer on projects involving more than one designer) and contractors (including a principal contractor on projects involving more than one contractor)
Ensuring the roles, functions and responsibilities of the project team are clear.
Ensuring that the people and organisations they appoint have the necessary skills, knowledge, experience and (if an organisation) the organisational capability to manage health and safety risks.
Ensuring sufficient time and resources are allocated.
Ensuring effective mechanisms are in place for members of the project team to communicate and cooperate with each other and coordinate their activities.
Ensuring relevant information is prepared and provided to other dutyholders.
Ensuring the principal designer and principal contractor carry out their duties. This could be done by arranging project progress meetings or via written updates.
Ensuring welfare facilities are provided.
Maintaining and reviewing arrangements to ensure they remain relevant.

See also the article CDM 2015 client duties

[edit] Client responsibilities under the Building Safety Act 2022

Construction clients carrying on work in England, for example, an organisation building their offices, a developer, or a homeowner doing up their home, will impacted by the changes to the regulatory system for building control under the Building Safety Act 2022.

The changes all stem from the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which precipitated a root and branch rethink of the way we protect the safety of the people who use buildings. Led by Dame Judith Hackitt, the rethink found (among many other things) that the existing Building Regulations 2010 (Building Regs), one of the main objectives of which is to protect people in buildings, had significant shortcomings. For example, she found that:

The people carrying out design and building work, and those checking it, did not always appear to be adequately competent to ensure that projects they work on comply with the Building Regulations.
The systems used to assure compliance in design and building work appeared to fall short of satisfactory standards.
The penalties for breaches were not enough of a deterrent to discourage non-compliance.

The Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) responded to these shortcomings, opening the way for a piece of secondary legislation – The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023 – to fix them. It does this by amending the BRegs to:

Introduce new dutyholder roles with accompanying duties.
Insist that these dutyholders have adequate competence.
Impose new procedures to mitigate risks to the safety of building users.

Closely related to these measures, the BSA also amended the Building Act 1984 to make dutyholders’ non-compliance more punitive in various ways.

Dutyholders are persons (i.e., individuals or corporate bodies) with legal duties of which there are five kinds:

It is possible for one person to take on more than one dutyholder role. For example, principal dutyholders do just that: they have designer or contractor duties, with additional principal dutyholder obligations on top.

The client’s chief duty, which does not extend to domestic clients (see below), is to make suitable arrangements for planning, managing, monitoring their project so that it complies with all relevant requirements. This includes allocating enough resources (e.g., time and, presumably, money).

A client’s arrangements are ‘suitable’ if:

They ensure not just that the design work is carried out so that the building work to which the design relates, if built, would comply with all relevant requirements, but also that the building work is carried out in compliance with all relevant requirements.
They enable the designers and contractors to cooperate with each other to ensure compliance with all relevant requirements.
They provide for periodic review of the design and building work to identify whether it is HRB work.

Once these arrangements are in place, a client must:

Ensure that they are maintained and reviewed throughout the project.
Provide information about the building to every designer and contractor on the project as soon as practicable. Cooperate with other persons working on or in relation to the project such that other Building Regulations dutyholders can fulfil their duties or function. Note the wording here: clients must cooperate with all persons where a failure to do so might interfere with the ability of dutyholders on the project to fulfil their duties or function. Since this is likely to be rather hard to predict, it is best simply to cooperate with everyone with a legitimate interest in the project – regardless of whether they are dutyholders.

Domestic clients are not required to ensure suitable arrangements. When you are a domestic client, the duty to ensure that there are suitable arrangements in place or that they are maintained throughout the life of the project is allocated as follows: Where there is only one contractor, the duty is the contractor’s by default.

Where there is more than one contractor, the duty is either the Building Regulations principal contractor’s or, where agreed in writing with the Building Regulations principal designer, it is the Building Regulations principal designer’s duty. Note: however, the client must satisfy themself that these duties have been allocated.

Where there is more than one client on a project, they must agree between them in writing who is to take on the Building Regulations client role. The other clients still have some duties under the Building Regulations, though and are:

the duty to provide information to the extent that it is in the possession of the client or which is reasonably obtainable by or on behalf of the client.
the duty to cooperate with other dutyholders.
the duty to make suitable arrangements to ensure that designers and contractors know that they are working on an HRB.