What is a Principal Designer Advisor (PD Advisor)

A Principal Designer Advisor (PD Advisor) is a third party consultant employed to assist the appointed Principal Designer to discharge his duties.

They are usually appointed when the Principal Designer either does not have the necessary skills, knowledge training and experience to accept the appointment or when they don’t have the resource capacity. 

They are not necessarily Designers and very often are specialist construction health and safety consultants and they do not have a formal CDM appointment. 

Mosaic exists to help PD Advisors discharge the PD duties (on behalf of the PD) effectively, in a timely manner, and thereby upholding the HSE's core aims of safety at work.

On behalf of the Principal Designers the PD Advisor must;

• plan, manage, monitor and coordinate health and safety in the pre-construction phase. In doing so they must take account of relevant information, Existing Documents (such as an existing health and safety file) that might affect design work carried out both before and after the construction phase has started
• help and advise the client in bringing together Pre-Construction Information, and provide the information designers and contractors need to carry out their duties
• work with any other designers on the project to eliminate foreseeable health and safety Risks or Hazards to anyone affected by the work and, where that is not possible, take steps to reduce or control those risks
• ensure that everyone involved in the Pre-Construction Phase communicates and cooperates, coordinating their work wherever required
• liaise with the Principal Contractor, keeping them informed of any risks that need to be controlled during the construction phase
  
  

On a Domestic Client Project where the domestic client does not appoint a principal designer, the role of the principal designer must be carried out by the designer in control of the pre-construction phase. When working for a domestic client, the client duties will normally be taken on by another dutyholder (often the principal contractor on projects involving more than one contractor). However, the principal designer can enter into a written agreement with the domestic client to take on the client duties in addition to their own