Principal Designer

At Race Cottam we strongly believe that health and safety considerations are integral with normal design activities and not an add-on.  H&S responsibility rests with the key designers right from the start of their involvement, a feature we have observed has often being lacking within the industry.

Our CDM responsibilities are fully integrated into our Quality system, with reviews taking place throughout the project. We ensure that the client is aware of their own [and important] duties and work with the whole team to coordinate the awareness and management of design risk issues.

We do have standardised formats to guide us but we are keen to avoid generic tick-lists. Our approach is a bespoke one; concentrating on the significant and unusual aspects of a project and ensuring that contractors and other designers are aware of what risks cannot be entirely avoided.

We are keen to include this service as part of all our design commissions and have achieved great success working with the construction team to achieve a safe site and a safe building.  The Piazza building at York University was awarded a prestigious health and safety award of which we are extremely proud.