The construction phase sections of a management plan

The construction management plan sections that actually get scrutinised are the ones with numbers in them: vehicle movements per day, working hours by activity, dust trigger levels, predicted noise at the nearest façade. Everything else in the document is procedure, and procedure is quick to write. The numbers are what the environmental protection officer and the highway engineer will hold you to for the length of the build.

A plan submitted to discharge a pre-commencement condition has one job: to let two or three officers approve it without a further round of correspondence. Writing it for that audience shortens the approval from months to weeks.

What the plan has to cover and who reads it

A construction management plan is normally required by condition, to be submitted and approved in writing before development begins. Some authorities call it a construction environmental management plan and expect the ecological and pollution prevention measures inside the same document.

Four readers, each looking for something different.

• The case officer, checking the plan answers every limb of the condition.
• The environmental protection or environmental health officer, reading the hours, the dust regime and the noise predictions.
• The highway authority, reading the routing, the vehicle numbers, the access arrangements and anything that touches the public highway.
• The contractor's site team, who will use it as a working document, which means it has to be written so a site manager can follow it.

Neighbours read it too, because it appears on the planning register. That is a good reason to keep the complaints procedure specific and the contact details real.

Where a separate construction traffic management plan is also required, split the material rather than duplicating it. Traffic routing, swept paths and highway works go in the traffic plan, and the management plan cross-references it.

Site access, routing and vehicle numbers

Start with the largest vehicle the site will receive, then work backwards. The section needs the access point marked on a plan, swept path drawings for that vehicle at the site entrance and at any tight junction on the approach, visibility splays for the temporary access, and the position of any banksman.

Then the routing. Give the approved route from the strategic road network to the site on a drawing, with the roads you have agreed to avoid named and the reason stated, usually a school, a weight restriction or a substandard width. Add how drivers will be informed, which in practice means a route instruction issued with every delivery booking and a copy in the site office.

Vehicle numbers need a table by phase. Demolition, earthworks and substructure, superstructure, and fit-out generate very different profiles, and an average across the whole programme hides the peak that the highway officer cares about. Give daily two-way movements by vehicle type for each phase, with the peak week identified.

Three items that belong here and are often missed. Wheel washing, with the type of installation and the position shown, plus a road sweeping arrangement for the frontage. The consents needed for anything on the highway: a temporary crossover, a hoarding or scaffold licence, a skip permit, or a temporary traffic order for a closure. And the holding arrangement for vehicles arriving early, because a lorry waiting on a residential street at 6.45am generates more complaints than the whole of the demolition phase.

Working hours and the exceptions worth negotiating

The standard condition across most authorities restricts construction to weekday daytime hours with a shorter Saturday and nothing on Sundays or bank holidays. Write the hours you are asking for in the plan, activity by activity, rather than relying on the condition wording alone.

Four exceptions are worth asking for, each with a justification.

1. Continuous concrete pours, which cannot be interrupted once started, with advance notification to neighbours and a limit on how many are expected.
2. Crane erection and dismantling, and major lifts, which sometimes need to happen outside normal hours for safety or to allow a road closure.
3. Off-peak deliveries where the highway authority requires movements outside the network peak, which sits directly against what the environmental protection officer wants. Flag the tension and propose the compromise rather than leaving the two officers to discover it.
4. Internal fit-out works, which generate no noise beyond the building envelope once it is closed, and which can often run for longer hours.

The other mechanism to use is prior consent under section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974. The contractor applies to the local authority for consent to a stated method, plant and hours, and once granted, that consent gives protection against a notice under section 60 for works carried out in accordance with it. It costs a fee and some preparation, and on a constrained urban site it buys certainty that a planning condition cannot.

Dust suppression and monitoring

Dust is assessed against the Institute of Air Quality Management guidance on the assessment of dust from demolition and construction, which categorises the site by activity into demolition, earthworks, construction and trackout, and sets mitigation proportionate to the risk in each.

The plan needs to state the risk category the assessment reached, then list the mitigation that follows from it. Standard measures worth naming specifically rather than generically: damping down of demolition and cutting operations with a stated water source, enclosure or sheeting of stockpiles, sheeting of all loads leaving the site, on-site cutting with water suppression or local extraction, hard surfacing of haul routes, and a limit on drop heights when loading.

Monitoring is where plans are thin. Say what you will monitor, how, where and against what.

• Daily visual inspection of the site boundary and the frontage, recorded in a log with the inspector named.
• Dust deposition gauges at agreed boundary positions, with the sampling interval stated.
• Real-time particulate monitoring with an agreed trigger level and a documented action on exceedance, on sites where the air quality assessment or an Air Quality Management Area designation makes it proportionate.

Give the action on a trigger, and give the name of the person who takes it. A monitoring regime with no consequence attached is not a control.

Noise and vibration during construction

Assessment follows BS 5228 Part 1 for noise and Part 2 for vibration. The plan should carry predicted levels at the nearest sensitive receptors for each phase, using the plant schedule and the on-time percentages, and it should state which significance method was used.

Three points that carry weight with an environmental protection officer.

Plant selection stated as a commitment. Continuous flight auger piling rather than driven piling, electric rather than diesel where a supply exists, hydraulic breaking rather than percussive on a site next to housing.

Vibration limits with a receptor and a monitoring point. Give the guidance values relied on for cosmetic damage to the nearest structure and for human response in nearby dwellings, then set a monitoring point and a trigger below the limit so there is time to react.

And a pre-condition survey of adjoining properties where piling, breaking or deep excavation is proposed. It protects the developer as much as the neighbour, and offering it in the plan removes an objection.

Deliveries, storage and the site compound

Show the compound on a site set-up plan with the welfare units, offices, materials storage, skips, fuel store and parking marked. Officers look for four things on that drawing.

Distance from the boundary. Stores, generators and skips against a garden fence are an avoidable complaint.

Protection of retained trees. Fencing to the root protection areas, in the positions the arboricultural method statement requires, with no storage, mixing or vehicle movement inside them.

Fuel and oil storage with secondary containment and a spill response kit, plus the pollution prevention measures for any watercourse or surface water drain on or near the site.

Site lighting, specified to be directed into the site and downwards, with a curfew. On a site with bat activity the lighting design has to respect the commuting routes identified in the ecology work, and that constraint belongs in the plan rather than in a separate document nobody on site reads.

Materials and waste tie into the wider reporting. A site waste management plan covers the arisings, the segregation and the destinations, and where a scheme carries circular economy commitments, the construction plan is where they become operational. The reporting structure for that is set out under the circular economy statement reporting structure.

Complaints procedure and site contacts

This section is short and it decides how the build feels to the street. Four elements.

A named site manager, with a mobile number and an email address, displayed on the hoarding at a height people can read and included in a letter to every property within an agreed distance before work starts.

A logged complaints register recording the date, the complaint, the response and the outcome, available to the council on request.

A response time commitment, usually same working day for acknowledgement and a stated period for substantive response.

And advance notification of disruptive operations: the demolition start, piling, concrete pours, crane lifts and any road closure, by letter drop at least a week ahead.

Registration with a considerate construction scheme is often offered and sometimes required by condition. It is worth doing on a site with close neighbours, because it gives an independent route for complaints and it signals intent.

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