MGL Projects is a design-and-build contractor delivering fit-out projects across the commercial, retail and residential sectors. MGL often fulfils both principal designer and principal contractor duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015). That dual role is central to MGL’s offer and a significant responsibility for a growing business to carry alone.
The challenge
In 2022, MGL’s growth had begun to outpace its health and safety arrangements. The directors and management team had kept responsibility close, managing health and safety internally alongside winning work and delivering projects. It is a familiar position for a growing design and build contractor, and a hard one to sustain without support.
The business now needed specialist knowledge spanning health and safety, CDM 2015 and management systems. Furthermore, documentation needed to be robust enough to handle scrutiny from larger clients, accreditation assessors and ISO auditors.
Much of MGL’s work depends on accreditations that clients check before a contractor can tender, among them SafeContractor and Constructionline, the schemes that independently verify a contractor’s health and safety standards under the SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) umbrella.
So the requirement was breadth without headcount - specialist health, safety and CDM capability, documentation brought into one framework, and accreditations secured and kept, all without recruiting a full-time internal advisor the business didn’t need.
Why Principal Risk Management
MGL appointed Principal Risk Management on a retained basis as its competent person, the source of health and safety expertise every employer is legally required to have access to, and as the specialist capacity its growth now demanded.
A retainer answered the breadth problem in a way a single hire could not: one internal specialist brings one person’s knowledge and one person’s availability, while a retained consultancy brings a team’s expertise across health and safety, CDM and management systems, with no dependency on any one individual and no fixed cost of another senior role.
The arrangement was built to add capability, not take over. MGL’s directors continued to run their business and projects as they always had, with specialist advice, review, and delivery capacity now on call whenever a question, a project, or a regulator required it.
Our approach
Retained competent-person support
MGL’s directors and project teams can pick up the phone or send an email whenever health and safety needs an answer. Some questions are routine. Others involve unfamiliar hazards or situations where a busy contractor most needs experienced judgement, and needs it quickly. That access changes how problems behave. Questions get answered while they are still questions, before they become delays, disputes, or audit findings.
One system for health, safety, quality and environment
We brought MGL’s fragmented documentation into a single integrated management system covering health and safety, quality and environmental compliance. Policies, procedures and records that had grown up separately now follow one consistent framework, built around how MGL actually delivers projects rather than imposed on top of it.
One system means one way of doing things. Every project starts from the same arrangements, and every document has a place which matters as much to a client as it does to a site team.
SafeContractor and Constructionline accreditation
We prepared and managed MGL’s applications and renewals for SafeContractor and Constructionline, compiling the evidence each assessment requires — policies, training records, insurance, and proof that arrangements work on site as they do on paper.
Both schemes require renewal, and standards move. As a retained adviser, we keep MGL’s evidence current so each renewal is a formality, not a scramble.
CDM 2015 support across both dutyholder roles
Because MGL commonly acts as both principal designer and principal contractor, its CDM duties span the whole project from pre-construction planning through to active site delivery. We provide advisory support across both roles, helping plan health and safety into projects before work starts, and supporting its management once sites are live.
Contractor assessment, RAMS and site inspections
We assess MGL’s subcontractors before they start work and support the production and review of RAMS (risk assessments and method statements). We also carry out site safety inspections, giving the directors an independent view of standards on their projects.
We treat documentation as a live control, not a filing exercise. When a design changes, a contractor changes or site conditions change, the paperwork changes with it.
The outcome
The business now has specialist health, safety and CDM expertise on call, a single management system its teams work to, and accreditations that stay current — arrangements that used to compete for the directors’ attention, now handled with an experienced partner alongside them.
The commercial effects run through the business. SafeContractor and Constructionline accreditation is secured and maintained, protecting MGL’s access to the clients and tenders that require them. CDM duties on design-and-build projects are planned and managed with specialist input across both dutyholder roles. And the directors’ time goes where it earns the most - winning and delivering projects.
The integrated management system also gave MGL more than compliance today. Because health and safety, quality and environmental arrangements share one framework, the business laid the foundations for certification to ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental) a route opened by work done once, properly. Four years on, the arrangement has become part of how MGL runs.