Do you need a health and safety project supervisor for a home fit-out?

Most people buying in Malta buy a shell: bare blockwork, a screed if you are lucky, services stubbed to a wall. Finishing it feels like a domestic matter — a few trades, a few months, your own flat. Since 7 September 2025 the law has taken a different view. Under the Health and Safety at Work (Minimum Health and Safety Requirements for Work at Construction Sites) Regulations, S.L. 646.27 (L.N. 52 of 2025), the client — the owner — must appoint a project supervisor for health and safety before works begin, and for a multi-trade fit-out the exemptions usually do not apply.

These regulations replaced S.L. 646.25 and implement Directive 92/57/EEC, so the structure will be familiar if you have built in another EU member state. What is new in Malta is that the "competent person" is now tied to a formal OHSA register rather than being a matter of judgement.

Finishing works are inside the scope

The common assumption is that "construction site" means a crane, a hoarding and a hole in the ground. The regulations do not read that way.

Regulation 2 defines a project as running to completion including finishing works. Schedule I, which sets out the works covered, lists fitting-out, alterations, renovation, maintenance and painting. An apartment being taken from shell to habitable is squarely within that. So is a renovation of an older townhouse, and so is a repaint-and-replumb job that would barely register as a project in conversation.

The other definition that matters is contractor, which includes self-employed persons. In the Maltese market, where the electrician, the plumber, the tiler, the aluminium installer and the gypsum crew are often individually self-employed and individually engaged, that definition does a lot of work.

What the client has to do

Regulation 3 puts the duty on the client, not the builder.

1. Appoint a project supervisor for health and safety chosen from OHSA's competent persons register (reg. 3(1)).
2. You may appoint yourself only if you are personally registered as competent (reg. 3(2)). Being an experienced property investor does not qualify you.
3. The engagement must be in writing (reg. 3(3)).
4. Work may not start or progress until the appointment has been made and notified to OHSA (reg. 3(4)).
5. If the supervisor dies or the engagement is terminated, OHSA must be notified within 15 days, and work stops until a replacement is appointed (regs. 3(5)–(7)).

Starting without a project supervisor is an offence under regulation 3(8).

Three further client duties sit alongside the appointment:

• Regulation 4 — the client keeps a health and safety file for the works and hands it over to any buyer. If you sell the property later, the file goes with it.
• Regulation 5 — a health and safety plan must exist before the site is set up, not once the trades are already in.
• Regulation 6 — prior notice to OHSA at least four calendar weeks before works begin, where the job will last more than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers on site simultaneously, or where it exceeds 500 person-days. A copy of that notice is displayed on site. Most single-dwelling fit-outs will not reach these thresholds; a large villa or a whole-block renovation might.

Regulation 10 is worth reading twice: appointing a project supervisor does not relieve the client of responsibility. You delegate the function, not the liability.

The domestic client exemption, and why it is narrow

Regulation 8 disapplies regulation 3 for a domestic client — but only where all three of the following hold:

• (a) no prior notice under regulation 6 is required;
• (b) only one contractor is present for the whole project;
• (c) none of the Schedule II risks arise.

A "domestic client" is defined in regulation 2 as someone having minor works done, not for the purposes of a business, in premises they own or lawfully occupy. Note the word minor. A full shell-to-finish fit-out is not obviously minor work, and the definition gives no square-metre or value threshold to measure against.

Condition (a) is usually satisfied for a single flat. Condition (b) is where most fit-outs fail. If you engage your own electrician, your own plumber, your own tiler and your own gypsum installer, you have four contractors on the project, because self-employed persons count. Condition (c) catches more jobs than people expect: Schedule II includes falls from height where the risk is aggravated by the nature of the work, work with dangerous chemical or biological substances, work near high-voltage power lines, and assembly of heavy prefabricated components. Waterproofing a roof, installing façade apertures from a scaffold, or craning in a prefabricated element will each want checking against that list.

What the regulations do not settle is whether a single main contractor using its own subcontractors counts as "one contractor" for the purposes of (b). That is the question that decides the exemption for a turnkey arrangement, and the text does not answer it. Confirm it with OHSA rather than assuming either way.

What the project supervisor actually does

The supervisor is not a box-ticking signature. Under the new regime they can receive health and safety concerns from any interested party — which in a Maltese apartment block means neighbours and the condominium can raise matters with a named person — and they can inspect the site and order works halted where there is reasonable concern of serious risk. Contractors, including self-employed ones, must follow the supervisor's directions, implement the health and safety plan and keep written risk assessments.

For an owner living abroad while a Gozo or Sliema fit-out proceeds, that halt power is a real factor in programme risk. It is also, read the other way, the only on-site authority that exists independently of the people you are paying.

Appointing a client representative

Regulation 9 allows the client to appoint a representative who takes on the client's duties. The representative must be resident or established in the EU or EEA and must be notified to OHSA with the prescribed details. A turnkey contractor managing the whole fit-out can be appointed in this role, which is how most non-resident owners will deal with the practicalities. Regulation 9 was among the provisions touched by L.N. 109 of 2026, and we have not compared the amended wording line by line, so check the current consolidated text on legislation.mt before relying on the detail.

Again: regulation 10 means this does not make you no longer the client.

Finding a supervisor

OHSA maintains the competent persons register at ohsa.mt/competent. The page carries a downloadable register PDF, an eForm for persons applying to be listed, the initial-application-fee document, and the underlying Administrative Instrument No. 1 of 2025 in English and Maltese, made under article 17 of the Health and Safety at Work Act (Cap. 646). OHSA can be reached at ohsa@ohsa.mt or on 138.

Two practical points. First, the register is a list of people entitled to act, not a price list — no market rates for residential project supervision appear to be published anywhere. Second, the appointment has to be made and notified before works start, so this belongs in your pre-contract sequence alongside the Planning Authority position and condominium consents, not in the week the scaffold arrives.

This article summarises published regulations and is not legal advice. Verify the current text of S.L. 646.27 on legislation.mt and confirm your own position with OHSA or a lawyer.