Temporary works are everything that holds something up, holds something back or gets people to the work and is not part of the finished building: falsework, propping, needling, excavation support, façade retention, crane bases, hoardings. They fail in the same few ways, and BS 5975-1:2024, the code of practice for temporary works procedures, exists because those ways are known. Written from the side of the desk that signs the permit to load, here is what the code expects.
The law behind the code
BS 5975-1:2024 is a British Standard, not a regulation. The law is CDM 2015 regulation 19: all practicable steps must be taken to prevent a structure collapsing, any temporary support must be designed, installed and maintained to withstand the loads that are foreseeable, and no part of a structure may be loaded so as to make it unsafe. CDM's definitions make whoever designs temporary works a designer, and regulation 9 gives them a designer's duties; regulation 15 puts the planning and monitoring of the work on the contractor doing it; regulation 13 puts the coordination of everyone's temporary works on the principal contractor. The code is the recognised way of meeting those duties, and the measure a contractor is held to after a collapse.
The people
The code starts with people, not forms. The contractor names a designated individual, senior enough to own the procedure. That person appoints a temporary works coordinator in writing, with a stated scope and on evidence of competence, and the coordinator has supervisors where they cannot be at every scheme. A coordinator who was never appointed in writing has a hard time showing they were appointed at all.
The sequence
Every item follows the same path, and each step leaves a document.
- The register. The item goes on the register before anything is designed.
- The design brief. The coordinator tells the designer what the works are for, what loads they carry, what they bear on, the sequence of erection, loading and strike, the interfaces and the constraints.
- The category. Design check category 0 to 3, decided on the complexity of the design; the consequence of failure is weighed through the implementation risk class and may push the category up. The category fixes how independent the check must be: within the design team for a simple design, an individual not involved in the design for a more involved one, an independent organisation for a complex or innovative scheme.
- The design check certificate. The checker names the drawings and the revision checked, confirms the assumptions and certifies the design before erection starts.
- The inspection before loading. The supervisor checks the erected works against the checked drawing, records every deviation and who accepted it, and the coordinator signs. That signature is the hold point the permit to load should cite.
- Change control. A checked design is only checked as drawn. A different load, a changed sequence or a substituted component goes back to the designer through the coordinator before it is built, and the revised drawing replaces the old one at the workface.
- The release before strike. The permanent works must be shown able to carry the load, on evidence, before the temporary works come out. That is an engineering question, and the permit to strike is the site permission that should cite the answer.
Where contractors go wrong
The common failures are procedural. The subcontractor's propping scheme nobody on the principal contractor's side registered. The category decided by habit rather than reasons. The check certificate that names no revision, so nobody can say whether the drawing on site is the one that was checked. The strike on age alone when the specification asked for strength results. Each is the document an inspector asks for first.
What a template does not do
A form gives the coordinator the headings and prints the driver on the sheet. It does not decide the category, check the design or inspect the props, and a certificate signed without the check behind it records something that did not happen. No document makes anyone compliant. Why we will never call a document "compliant".
Documents for this work
- The temporary works bundle — the seven procedure documents from appointment to strike release
- Temporary Works Coordinator and Supervisor Appointment
- Temporary Works Design Brief
- Temporary Works Category Assessment
- Design Check Certificate
- Temporary Works Inspection Before Loading or Use
- Temporary Works Change Control Record
- Temporary Works Removal and Strike Release
- Temporary Works Register and Design Check Record — the index every one of these is a line in
- Permit to Load and Strike — Temporary Works — the site permission the inspection and the release feed