25 November, 2025
The Department of Public Expenditure has undertaken a review of health and safety elements of the Capital Works Management Framework (CWMF) suite of procurement documents, contract documents and guidance notes.
Following this review, we have made a number of updates to documentation.
This will ensure that documentation is current and accurate with reference to applicable health and safety legislation and best practice, as set out by the Health and Safety Authority.
These amendments to the CWMF have been published today. The documents affected and the main changes are outlined below. Other minor changes will be incorporated into guidance notes as they are reviewed and updated.
To see a full description of the amendments, read the Change Note.
Superseded references to health and safety legislation have been revised across relevant CWMF documents.
The Open Procedure is no longer available for use with PW-CF2 (Building Works designed by the Contractor) and PW-CF4 (Civil Engineering Works designed by the Contractor). Contracting Authorities must now use the Restricted Procedure.
The ‘Health and Safety Coordinator’ protocol was put in place in the CWMF prior to the Health and Safety Authority bringing greater clarity to the role of PSDP during the tender period when procuring Design Build Contract teams. The ‘Health and Safety Coordinator’ role as it pertains to the Design Build Contractor procurement process has been withdrawn.
This impacts those using either of the Design Build Contracts PW-CF2 or PW-CF4. The revised protocol for PSDP duties during tender design is outlined in Section 4.1 of ITT-W1a.
The thresholds that determine the classification of projects under Health and Safety Types 1, 2, and 3 have been revised upwards.
Project categorisation for the purpose of assessment of Principal Service Provider(s) or Specialist Skill Provider(s) from all relevant Health and Safety legislation perspectives are on the basis of the current capital cost estimate of the construction project related to the competition. The specific project health and safety risk profile of some lower value projects may require the project to be assigned to a higher project category.
Change to MF2.2 (Letter of Acceptance) is additional text highlighting the situation that the health and safety appointments are made for services contracts COE1 and COE2 in the relevant Form of Tender and Schedule FTS9/FTS10.
Changes in MF 1.10, MF 2.4, MF 2.5 and MF 2.6 relate to updating of references to health and safety legislation and/or removal of references to the health and safety coordinator role.
Change to period of PSCS appointment from
‘between the Starting Date and the date of Substantial Completion of the Works contemplated in the Works Requirements’
to
‘from the Starting Date until all construction work on the project has been completed’
Contracting Authorities should ensure that they are issuing and seeking responses to the most up to date versions of all Capital Works Management Framework documents.
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