As a client, you must, at an early stage, plan and organise work processes and clarify areas of responsibility in such a way that it creates the conditions for a good work environment in your construction project.

When you plan the building or civil engineering project, not only your own organisation and personnel are included, but also other parties that you will need for the work environment management of the project. Think through the requisites early on, so that the project organisation corresponds to what is needed for health and safety work in your project, and then make a clear allocation of the tasks. Then you can organise work processes in a way that meets the needs and bring in the right resources for work environment management.

You may also need to develop your organisation as the project progresses, as prerequisites often change over time.

How you choose to organise the construction project's work and work processes affects the work environment, and the organisation must support good collaboration between the various parties.

Tip! Keep in mind that when you organise the work processes and follow up on the work environment management, your commitment and your presence in the construction project can contribute to a positive safety culture and a good work environment for everyone involved. When you follow up the work environment management, you also get feedback on what works well and what doesn't.

Tip! Evaluate the work done in the different stages of your project when you are finished. This gives valuable feedback that you and the others who participated in your project organisation can use and learn from in the next project.

You may have different needs for resources in work environment management, depending on the size, complexity and risk level of the project.

A construction project can be small in terms of cost and time frame, but can be complex in its design and involve major risks for health and safety. It can also be just the opposite, for example a large project in terms of cost, geographical area or time frame, but with few health and safety risks that are easy to overview and take action on. Therefore, you need to highlight and take into account all these factors when planning which resources you need for the health and safety work in your project.

The different roles in a project can have different objectives in the choices of, for example, construction products, design, materials or solutions that need to be decided and that can affect the work environment in the construction project. The roles can be part of your own organisation, but they can also be external, such as specialists, purchasers, schedulers, those who will use the completed building or structure and others who set requirements.

Therefore, include the health and safety issues as an integral part when you, for example:

• make choices and take decisions
• make purchases
• perform scheduling.

When you make your choices, you must follow the basic principles to prevent health and safety risks that may arise in the construction phase or in the future use. Your routines for health and safety work must support how you work according to the basic principles.

When there is enough time for planning and design, there are greater opportunities for the designer to prioritise health and safety work and make proper risk analyses. In addition to reducing the risk of accidents and ill health during the construction phase, a realistic schedule can contribute to a delivery with higher quality in general.

A realistic schedule is based on the size, complexity and risk level of your construction project. Making a realistic schedule from the start and making sure to stick to it as much as possible, is something that usually saves both time and money. If, on the other hand, the schedule becomes too tight, it can lead to unconsidered decisions and thus increase the risk of accidents or ill health.

You can also use the schedules for comparison when evaluating tenders, to see if the schedules in the tenders are reasonable. Feel free to discuss the schedule with the tenderer so that you can assess the plausibility and resource allocation.

A work step or a construction project can be delayed for many different reasons. Among other things, the delay may be due to

• late deliveries
• late decisions
• modifications to the execution of work
• new conditions.

Things always happen along the way and therefore you need to follow up the schedule on an ongoing basis with both designers and contractors. By following up on how the work is progressing, you can see what is taking longer than planned. You can then implement measures to reduce the consequences later in the construction project.

Remember to include the health and safety perspective in all changes. A change in one place can affect other work that is dependent on either the place or the order in which tasks are performed.

Ill health due to high workload is one of the most common reasons for sick leave. Having too much to do in a short time is a big risk in the planning and design phase as well as during the construction phase. Staff who work under stress or time pressure tend to take short cuts in their work. This can lead to tasks not being done or losing quality, and those tasks can be important for carrying out the job safely.

In the construction phase, a too tight schedule often leads to coordination difficulties at the workplace. If several of the work needs to be carried out simultaneously in a limited area, and sometimes even on several different vertical levels, this entails a greater level of risk than if the works had been carried out at different times. At the end of the construction phase it is particularly common that many contractors have to work simultaneously in the same area in a way so that unnecessary risks arise.

When you hire parties for your construction project, you can set the requirements you consider necessary to get the result you want. This may involve reviewing the risks for health and safety that exist in the work and asking for an organisation with competence and experience of similar work. You can also make it clear that the different parties must cooperate with each other and that you, as the client, must participate in work environment management.

Tip! By making the requirements clear at the procurement stage, all tenderers have the same conditions to compete and it will be possible for you to evaluate equivalent tenders. You can use the health and safety requirements to strengthen the safety culture by designing requirements for health and safety work and by making sure that costs related to safety is not exposed to competition.

Keep in mind that when you choose someone to take care of tasks in your construction project, that party may also have other tasks in the project. This could lead to a conflict of interest that could have negative consequences for the health and safety work.

There is, under certain circumstances, an opportunity for the client to forge an agreement with a delegee who takes over the client's work environment responsibilities and duties, during the planning and design phase, during the construction phase or during the entire construction project.

Find out more about the client's delegee in chapter 5 in the provisions on design and building work environment coordination – basic obligations (AFS 2023:3) and in chapter 3, 7c § in the Work Environment Act:

Work Environment Act (1977:1160)

The client must appoint a suitable building work environment coordinator for the planning and design phase, Bas-P, and a building work environment coordinator for the construction phase, Bas-U. The building work environment coordinator can be a legal or actual person and helps you coordinate the designers respectively the contractors in the construction project.

If you specify health and safety requirements before you choose a Bas-P or Bas-U, you can more easily make sure that the building work environment coordinator you appoint will also use executive officers with training, competence and experience for the building work environment coordination in your construction project.

Since you, as a client, are not released from responsibility for the tasks that Bas-P and Bas-U have been given, you need to make sure that they have the necessary prerequisites to be able to perform their health and safety tasks. This implies that the coordinators must have the opportunity to set aside the time and staff needed for the coordination and health and safety work in the construction project.

When your construction project includes temporary structures or composite structures, you as the client need to make sure that the parties you choose have people with special competence who can check the safety of the structure as a whole. This is in order to prevent accidents from happening, since serious accidents have occurred when there was no one who had sufficient knowledge of the structure as a whole. A person with such knowledge must be present in both the design phase and the construction phase to check the structure. You need to make sure that there is a person with special competence available in the project.

Sometimes the building work environment coordinator does not have the authority to decide who is responsible for what in the construction project's health and safety work. Then, as the client, you must ensure that you and the other parties involved agree on the areas of responsibility.

It is vital to clarify who in the client's own organisation is responsible for the various health and safety tasks associated with the construction project.

When several different construction projects take place at the same time within the same geographical area, you as the client need to clarify the demarcation lines and areas of responsibility between them.

Several clients who conduct construction work in the same geographical location must agree on how the demarcation lines between the activities and the building work environment coordination should work.

During the early stages of your construction project, work begins on checking and following up that the work environment management functions properly.

In your first check, you should review whether the building work environment coordinators have the right resources in place and that they follow defined working methods. The need for resources for building work environment coordination can vary over time during the construction project. Therefore, regularly check that the organisation that was promised and needed is in place. 

Keep in mind that it is beneficial that you as the client have prepared and made clear how you will act and take measures when the work environment management does not function as you agreed - throughout the construction project.

If you discover that there are shortcomings in the work environment management when you do your follow-up, you as the client must ensure that measures are taken. These measures may involve preventing health and safety risks from occurring again.

Sometimes you may need to make sure that a dangerous work, which involves immediate and serious danger to life or health, is stopped or changed until the deficiencies have been corrected. You don't have to be the one to take action, but sometimes you are the only one who can. It may be that you, as the client, are the only one who has the possibility to take measures, for example when it comes to demarcation problems with other ongoing activities.

You are also tasked with ensuring that measures are taken when a Bas-P or Bas-U reports to you that a designer or contractor does not follow their instructions in matters that have, or may have, significance for the work environment during the construction phase or future use.

To give structure to the handover, it is advisable to organise a joint meeting, or integrate the handover of the work environment management into existing meetings. The important thing is that there is a transfer of knowledge between the parties, which also leads to an exchange of experience.

It is a good idea for you as the client to participate in the handover. This way you show your commitment to health and safety work and it can also facilitate in questions where decisions need to be made. At the meeting, you can follow up that your project has taken care of the health and safety issues at an early stage of the planning and design. Several meetings may be needed to clarify any ambiguities that affect the work environment.

It is common for design to proceed after the work environment plan has been handed over to Bas-U. Bas-P must then continue their work of coordinating the designers as before. Bas-P must also compile and provide information to Bas-U so that the work environment plan can be updated, as well as the other work environment management. As a client, you must continuously follow up the collaboration, so that handovers and the continued work environment management of the construction project are functioning.