Do I need a construction phase plan?

Short answer: if construction work is happening, yes. Under CDM 2015 a construction phase plan is required for every construction project — domestic or commercial, one day or one year, one trade or twenty. It's one of the most misunderstood requirements in UK construction, and one of the first documents an HSE inspector will ask to see.

Who has to write it?

On a single-contractor job, the contractor writes it. Where there's more than one contractor, the principal contractor writes it — and it must be in place before the construction phase begins, not rustled up when someone asks. For small domestic jobs the plan can be short and simple, but it still has to exist.

What goes in it

• Project details — the works, the dates, the key duty holders (client, designers, contractors)
• Management arrangements — who's in charge on site, how work is supervised, how contractors are coordinated, how the workforce is inducted and consulted
• Site rules — access, deliveries, exclusion zones, permits in use, welfare
• The significant risks — the site-specific ones: services, structural stability, work at height, lifting, temporary works, public interface — and the controls for each
• Emergency arrangements — fire, first aid, rescue, and how they're communicated

How long should it be?

As long as the risk demands and no longer. The HSE is explicit that the plan should be proportionate — a two-day domestic extension doesn't need a 60-page plan, and padding it with generic content actually makes it worse, because the site-specific detail drowns. A tight, honest 10–15 pages that genuinely reflects your site beats a copied 60-page monster every time.

The practical route

Start from a properly structured template: the management arrangements, site rules skeleton, risk-and-control tables, welfare and emergency sections are already built, and you fill in the project specifics. That's an afternoon's work instead of a week's — and it comes out looking like it was written by someone who's actually run a site.

The Pro Site Docs Construction Phase Plan template is a fully editable Word document with management arrangements, site rules, risk and control sections, welfare and emergency arrangements and sign-off built in. Running bigger jobs? The Principal Contractor CDM Pack adds the pre-construction information, F10 tracker, induction records and the rest of the CDM paper trail.

This guide is general information, not site-specific advice. A competent person must review and adapt any document to the specific works before use.