Asked to Be PSCS on a Home Extension? What an Irish Builder Takes On

The homeowner asks you to sign as PSCS on their extension, and every trade on site becomes yours to coordinate. Priced properly, it’s paid work the regulations require someone to do.

The form usually comes with the architect’s drawings. It’s one page, and the line with your name on it says you are “appointed Project Supervisor for the construction stage for the above project and accepts the appointment”, with a space for you to sign. That is the wording of the Health and Safety Authority’s own template. Signing it makes you the PSCS, the Project Supervisor for the Construction Stage, who manages and coordinates safety on site from the day work starts until it finishes. Where there’s a main builder, the HSA’s guide expects that person to be you.

Take an eight-week rear extension where you bring in your own electrician and plumber. The homeowner can’t skip the appointment on that job, for two separate reasons.

When a homeowner has to appoint a PSCS

The duty comes from the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013 (S.I. No. 291 of 2013), made under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. They’re law, not guidance, and the HSA, the State body for workplace safety, enforces them. Since 2013 they’ve covered a homeowner who pays someone to work on their own house.

Regulation 6(5) gives three triggers. If any one applies, the homeowner must appoint a PSCS and a PSDP in writing before the relevant stage starts. The PSDP, or Project Supervisor for the Design Process, coordinates safety in the design and is usually the architect or engineer on a domestic job.

1. More than one contractor works on the job. The HSA counts a subcontractor and a self-employed person as contractors.
2. The work involves a particular risk. Schedule 1 lists them, and the HSA’s guide for homeowners gives domestic examples: roof work with restricted access, deep excavation in poor ground, power lines over the site, precast floors or steel beams, and work involving asbestos.
3. The job is notifiable, meaning the programme runs longer than 30 working days or the work adds up to more than 500 person-days. The HSA counts every day any construction work happens, weekends and short days included.

Your extension meets the first trigger the day the electrician and plumber arrive. Eight weeks of work also runs past 30 working days, so the job is notifiable. Compare the HSA’s own example: a bricklayer building a wall on his own over five days, with no particular risk, meets none of the triggers. Add an electrician for one afternoon and the first one applies.

What the homeowner needs to see from you

If you start a job and realise it needs appointments the homeowner hasn’t made, regulation 24(2) puts a duty on you to tell them.

For work on their own home, regulation 6(7) puts the burden on you. Before any work starts, you show you’re competent and will put enough resources in. The HSA suggests a safety statement, evidence of training and references from similar jobs, along with how you’ll supervise the site. The regulations don’t set a qualification for the role. The 2005 Act measures competence against the task, so a bigger or riskier job asks more of you.

Tell your insurer you’re taking the role. Our guide to contractor insurance in Ireland covers what they’ll ask. Your subcontracts carry their own paperwork too, from RCT notifications to the payment claim notices between you and your subbies. A homeowner’s contract for their own house of 200 m² or less sits outside the Construction Contracts Act.

The PSCS paperwork

The appointment and your acceptance are both in writing (reg 6(1)). The HSA’s homeowner guide has a template form you can both sign.

Your extension also needs a safety and health plan. The regulations require one only if the job is notifiable or involves a particular risk (reg 12(2)). The architect, as PSDP, prepares a preliminary version, and the homeowner must pass it to you once you’re appointed. You develop it before work starts, adding measures for any particular risk and written site rules, and make sure every contractor knows them (reg 16). The HSA’s guide for contractors and project supervisors includes a domestic template.

Because the job is notifiable, you must notify the HSA before work begins (reg 22), on Approved Form AF2. You file it online through the HSA’s construction notification system. The homeowner has a separate duty to send an AF1 (reg 10). That’s two forms from two people, and the homeowner isn’t exempt from theirs. Once you’ve filed, keep the AF2 details clearly displayed on site and up to date. A copy of the completed form is normally enough.

Running the site day to day

Regulation 17 makes you organise cooperation between contractors, including ones who follow each other on site. You also check that everyone follows safe working procedures, arrange welfare facilities and keep unauthorised people off the site. On an extension, that means the family living next to it.

Safe Pass sits with you as well. Each contractor checks their own workers’ cards on day one and confirms in writing to you. You coordinate those checks and keep a record of the names (regs 17(5), 19 and 25). Our article on Safe Pass covers the check itself.

Before the trades leave, you gather written information from the electrician, plumber and others, such as as-installed details and certificates. You pass it to the PSDP, who compiles the safety file for the homeowner (regs 13 and 21).

You can also give directions to the other contractors. If a contractor ignores a written direction, regulation 20 requires you to notify the HSA, the homeowner and that contractor in writing. Breaching the regulations is an offence under the 2005 Act, with fines of up to €5,000 in the District Court and up to €3 million on indictment.

The Assigned Certifier is a different job

The PSCS runs site safety under the 2013 Construction Regulations. The Assigned Certifier, under the Building Control (Amendment) Regulations, inspects and certifies that the work meets the Building Regulations. That role applies to a new house or, since 27 July 2026, an extension with a floor area greater than 45 m², up from 40 m². The owner of a single house or an extension can opt out of statutory certification when lodging the commencement notice. They’re different jobs under different laws, so sign for one without assuming you’ve taken on the other.

Pricing the PSCS role into your quote

Show the role as its own line rather than burying it in preliminaries. There’s no official rate, so price the hours it takes you. These points are practical suggestions, not legal wording:

• Name the role and why it applies: “On your instruction we will act as PSCS under the Construction Regulations 2013, because more than one contractor will work on this project.”
• Say who the PSDP is, and that you aren’t taking that role. If the homeowner wants you to take both, price it separately.
• Make the start date depend on the signed appointment, the preliminary safety and health plan where one is needed, and on a notifiable job the homeowner’s AF1 having gone in.
• List what the fee covers: the construction-stage plan and site rules, coordinating the trades, welfare and site security, card records, the AF2 and the safety file information.
• Cover trades the homeowner books directly, such as a kitchen fitter. They still follow your site rules and directions, so ask the homeowner to have them report to you before starting.
• Add a variation clause in case the scope grows past 30 working days or a particular risk turns up, such as asbestos behind a wall.