A client-side CDM dutyholder search is not a request for a familiar job title. It is a search for someone who can make the client’s arrangements work in real projects, keep the right conversations moving and leave a reliable record of decisions. That distinction matters when the brief involves designers, contractors, occupied premises and a programme that cannot absorb ambiguity.
Start with the duty, not the label
The Regulations set out duties for clients, designers, principal designers, contractors and principal contractors. A client-side appointment therefore needs a clear map of the organisation’s role, the project stage and the interfaces the hire will own. A person who has only administered a health and safety file may not be ready to influence design risk. Someone who has only run site inspections may not have the client-side judgement needed to challenge an incomplete pre-construction plan.
The brief should say what must be true after the first month. Is the immediate need to appoint and coordinate dutyholders, interrogate pre-construction information, recover a slipping design risk register, or give senior leaders confidence that arrangements are being followed? The answer shapes the search far more effectively than adding another list of acronyms.
Be precise about which principal designer you mean. In England, the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023 introduced a separate set of building regulations dutyholders, including a principal designer and principal contractor responsible for compliance with building regulations. That role is not the same appointment as the CDM principal designer, even when one organisation holds both. A brief that blurs the two will attract candidates who are strong on health and safety in construction but have never had to evidence building regulations compliance, or the other way round. Say which regime the hire must support, and whether they are advising the client or acting for the dutyholder organisation.
Test practical competence
Ask candidates to explain a live example rather than recite the hierarchy of controls. A strong conversation covers how they identified a missing dutyholder, what they did when a designer’s information was late, how they handled a contractor who resisted a control, and what evidence they left behind. Listen for sequence: understand the risk, involve the right person, agree an action, check it is closed and escalate when it is not.
Competence also includes proportion. Client-side leadership is not the same as taking every task away from the project team. The right hire can define the standard, ask useful questions and hold people to their responsibilities without creating a parallel bureaucracy. They know when a matter is a design decision, a construction control, a client decision or an issue that needs specialist advice.
Search the interfaces
The best candidates are often not carrying the exact title CDM manager. They may be a client health and safety lead, a principal designer adviser, a project safety manager or a senior construction professional with strong client-side experience. A named search should look across those adjacent communities while protecting the essentials: the scale and type of work, the level of authority, the ability to influence without direct line management and the confidence to brief a board or investment committee.
Ask about interfaces with estates, procurement, design management, project controls and operations. A dutyholder appointment can fail when the person understands construction but cannot get information from the client organisation, or when they can write a policy but cannot challenge a programme decision. Reference conversations should test both technical credibility and the way the person behaves under pressure.
The role also sits beside other built-sector appointments. On an occupied estate, a client-side CDM lead will rely on the facilities team for live building information, permits and access, so it helps if they have worked closely with a facilities manager before. During delivery they will challenge, and depend on, the contractor’s site manager. Where works affect compartmentation, escape routes or alarm coverage, they will need to bring in the person responsible for the fire risk assessment, and know when the work calls for a competent fire risk assessor rather than a general safety view. Candidates who can describe those relationships in specific terms are usually the ones who have held the role for real.
Make the brief evidence-led
Include project stage, procurement route, construction value only as context, risk profile, occupied-building constraints and reporting line. State which records exist: construction phase plans, pre-construction information, design risk registers, appointments, competence records and the health and safety file. Candidates need enough detail to decide whether the role is a genuine leadership position or an administrative clean-up exercise.
Use a short scenario in interview. For example: a principal contractor is appointed, design information is incomplete, enabling works are due to start and the client team assumes the contractor will resolve everything. Ask the candidate for the first five actions, the people they would involve and the evidence they would expect to see. The answer reveals judgement, communication and an understanding of where client decisions remain necessary.
Three worked interview scenarios
Scenarios work better than abstract questions because they force the candidate to choose an order of actions. Give each one verbally and follow up on the points below. There is no single right answer; what matters is whether the candidate separates the client’s decisions from the duties of others, and whether they leave evidence behind.
Scenario one: refurbishment in an occupied building
A three-floor office refurbishment is planned while the remaining floors stay in use. The asbestos survey covers the common areas but not the ceiling voids on the affected floors. The contractor wants to start strip-out in two weeks, and the occupier’s facilities team has not been told about the planned out-of-hours noisy works.
A strong answer starts with the gap in pre-construction information and treats it as a client responsibility to resolve, not something to leave for the contractor to discover. The candidate should talk about commissioning the right survey before intrusive work, sharing the results with the principal designer and principal contractor, and agreeing segregation, access routes and communication with the occupier. Listen for how they would record the decision to delay or phase the start, and who signs it off. A weak answer jumps straight to site controls and never mentions the client’s own duty to provide information.
Scenario two: a late design change
Midway through construction, the contractor proposes a cheaper plant arrangement. It saves programme time but moves equipment into a roof area with no permanent edge protection, so future maintenance will need temporary access every time.
This tests whether the candidate understands that design risk includes the people who will maintain the building, not only those who build it. A strong candidate would ask who is reviewing the change as a designer, whether the principal designer has assessed the maintenance risk, and what the estates or facilities team thinks about long-term access. They should also say how the decision and its reasoning would reach the health and safety file. Watch for candidates who see this only as a cost question or who assume the contractor’s approval process is enough.
Scenario three: handover without a usable file
Practical completion is a week away. The health and safety file is a folder of manufacturer data sheets, there is no clear record of residual risks, and the as-built drawings are still marked “draft”. The occupier wants to move in on the agreed date.
Good candidates know the file is meant to help the people who will maintain, alter or demolish the building later. They would set out what must be in place before handover, what can follow on an agreed timetable, and who is accountable for each item. They would also raise the issue with the client decision-maker in writing rather than letting it drift past completion. A weak answer treats the file as a document-control task to finish after everyone has left site.
Interview questions that test client-side CDM competence
Use questions that make the candidate describe what they did, in what order, and who held each duty at the time.
- Walk me through how you helped a client meet its own duties under CDM 2015 on a recent project. What was in place before work started?
- How do you check that a principal designer and principal contractor have the skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability the project needs?
- What pre-construction information did you assemble, and what was missing that you had to chase?
- Tell me about a construction phase plan that was not adequate before work was due to begin. What happened next?
- How do you make sure the health and safety file is useful at handover, not just complete?
- Describe a time you disagreed with a project director about whether work could safely start. How did you put your case, and what was the outcome?
- How would you explain the client’s CDM duties to a board member who assumes the contractor carries all the risk?
- What would you look for in the first two weeks to judge whether the client’s arrangements on an inherited project are working?
Good answers are specific about documents, timing and responsibility. Weak answers treat CDM as a form that a consultant fills in on the client’s behalf.
Red flags in CDM dutyholder recruitment
- Describing the client’s duties as something “the principal designer handles”, without explaining what the client itself must do.
- No examples of challenging a designer or contractor on competence, resourcing or time allowed.
- Treating notification to HSE as if it were the same thing as compliance.
- Little or no experience of handover and the health and safety file.
- Talking about “signing off” risk assessments on the contractor’s behalf, which suggests confusion about who holds which duty.
- Examples that all come from one contractor or one framework, with no evidence of adapting to a different client organisation.
- References that praise the person’s paperwork but cannot describe a single decision they influenced.
What a good shortlist looks like
A useful shortlist for a client-side CDM appointment is short, usually a handful of people, and each profile should answer the questions the hiring manager will actually ask. For every candidate, expect to see:
- The projects they have supported on the client side, with stage, type of building and whether it was occupied, described without breaching anyone’s confidentiality.
- Which duties they personally held or advised on, and which belonged to others on those projects.
- One example of a challenge they raised with a designer or contractor, and what changed as a result.
- How they have handled handover and the health and safety file.
- Any regime-specific experience, such as supporting building regulations dutyholders on higher-risk work, stated plainly rather than implied.
A shortlist built this way lets the client compare like with like. It also shows quickly where a strong candidate has a gap, such as limited board-level exposure, so the interview can test that point directly instead of discovering it after appointment. The same approach applies across our built-sector searches.
Keep the search discreet and focused
A confidential client-side appointment can be sensitive because project partners may not know that a capability gap is being addressed. A network-only search allows the brief to reach people who are known for relevant work rather than everyone with a matching keyword. It also gives a passive candidate enough context to judge the opportunity without broadcasting the client or project.
Discretion should not mean vagueness. Give selected candidates the real shape of the work, the decision rights, travel expectations and reason for the appointment under an appropriate confidentiality approach. That is how a search earns trust and avoids a late-stage mismatch.
A better outcome than a CV pile
The outcome should be a short list of people whose examples match the client’s risk and delivery environment. The client should be able to see why each person is credible, where the evidence comes from and what to test at interview. That is more useful than a long list of generic construction safety profiles.
VS Recruitment works on built-sector appointments through a network-only, discreet process. The search fee is £450. If the requirement is a client-side CDM dutyholder appointment, see the built-sector recruitment service or contact VS Recruitment with the project stage and the capability gap.
Frequently asked questions
Does a CDM project have to be notified to HSE?
Under CDM 2015, a project is notifiable where the construction work is expected to last more than 30 working days with more than 20 workers working at the same time at any point, or to exceed 500 person days. The client is responsible for notification, although it can ask someone else to submit it.
Can a client hand its CDM duties to someone else?
A client can appoint advisers and get support, but the client’s own duties stay with the client. Where a project has more than one contractor and the client does not appoint a principal designer or principal contractor, the client must carry out those duties itself.
What does a CDM dutyholder do?
The role depends on the dutyholder appointment and project context. In recruitment terms, the brief should define the responsibilities, interfaces and evidence the person will own rather than relying on the title alone.
Is a CDM dutyholder the same as a health and safety adviser?
Not automatically. Some people can perform both functions, but a dutyholder search must test project-specific responsibilities, authority and coordination, not just general safety knowledge.
Should the candidate have worked client-side before?
Client-side experience is valuable because the person must influence others while retaining the client’s decisions and records. Strong adjacent experience can work when the candidate can demonstrate that judgement.
How can competence be tested at interview?
Use a realistic project scenario and ask for the sequence of actions, people involved, records expected and escalation route. Then verify examples through structured references.
Is the CDM principal designer the same as the building regulations principal designer?
No. In England, the building regulations dutyholder regime introduced in 2023 created a principal designer role focused on compliance with building regulations. It is a separate appointment from the CDM principal designer, although the same person or organisation can hold both if they are competent for each. A recruitment brief should say which role the hire will support.
What is the VS Recruitment fee?
The network-only, discreet search described here is available for £450. The scope and decision-maker should be agreed before introductions are made.
Sources
Sources: Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; HSE: Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; HSE: Managing for health and safety; HSE: The principal contractor; The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023.