Shooting blanks

Planning supervisors get plenty of bad press and they are right to take it personally. Critics praise the function of planning supervision. They are all for it. It is planning supervisors they do not like, and it is the title they are against. They think the role ought to be performed by someone with power who is invited to the table at project inception, such as designers, project managers, contractors and clients.

Phil Young is one such critic. He is director of technical and customer services with civil engineering contractor Lumsden and Carroll. Periodically he takes on the role of planning supervisor and because he is part of a contracting organisation, he has a certain amount of clout. And he needs it. Consider what planning supervisors do: They ensure the designers design safely and ensure that information flows freely among designers.

“If the planning supervisor is not part of the consultant or the contractor, he delays things. He’s just not in touch. You don’t need this separate role,” said Young.

Contrast this with the experience of architect Brian Jefferson who was a planning supervisor for the City of Sunderland, but now works for a private client. He established the planning supervisory section for the council, an act he now feels was a waste of time. He and his small department had no power to demand information from the relevant parties. And because his department collected fees from other departments in the council for their input there was an disincentive to use the planning supervisors in a meaningful way. Jefferson said they would print reams of health and safety plans but that they were formulaic and ineffective. He said 95% of jobs did not have design input risk assessment, and the result was that designers were not designing with safety in mind.

Some planning supervisors enjoy their work. Michael Stott is a planning supervisor for the London Borough of Southwark. He rides a motorcycle to sites, which typifies his relaxed-but-engaged attitude. He was recently commissioned to visit a site. This is not usually a planning supervisor’s duty but he was asked specially to do so. He found that although the contractor had been on site for some weeks, refurbishing a block of flats, the health and safety plan was not being followed.

“They’ve got one portaloo, no hard hats, no first-aider on site, no booking-in station, even though on paper their plan looks okay,” said Stott. “It should have been in place weeks ago.”

Although this happens nine times out of 10, Stott did not get confrontational. He sat down with the contractor, gave him a copy of the regulations, went through what he was required to do and even sorted out a problem with his computer. Then he sent a report to the client.

What kind of industry needs to be checked and caught out like naughty little boys?

Stott said the drawback to planning supervisors is that they are appointed too late and do not have enough power. However, when the process is allowed to work it works well, and the few times he has been called in at the appropriate stage, designers designed more safely. The problem is with power.

“The role should include going onto site to check on progress,” he said. “But I don’t plan and I don’t supervise.”

No one is more aware of the precarious position of planning supervisors than Brian Law, chief executive of the Association of Planning Supervisors, a 5,000-strong body set up after the CDM regulations were introduced in 1995. Law argues that the CDM Regulations are fine, but only if they are obeyed.

He is left in the unfortunate position of asking an unresponsive industry to take planning supervisors more seriously, to appoint them when the CDM Regulations require, and not as an afterthought.

“What kind of industry needs to be checked and caught out like naughty little boys?” said Law.