The Regulator’s brutally honest assessment of where the building safety regime is failing should give everyone hope that vital change is coming, says Rachel Davidson*.
Speaking at the recent Building the Future conference in London, the new chair of the Building Safety Regulator Andy Roe said the principle behind the Building Safety Act remained “morally unassailable” and was the correct response to the “apex failure” of multiple agencies that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster.
However, Roe, who witnessed the fire in his former role as commissioner of London Fire Brigade, said the framework created to deliver the requirements of the Act was not working “so we are not building the volume of housing that we need…and if we are not building homes, we are not keeping people safe”.
He said his priority was to address the huge backlog of new build delays for higher risk buildings (HRBs) at planning gateway two (G2) but warned that there would be similar issues at gateway three without significant changes. He said initiatives introduced since he took up the post in July should mean that getting G2 sign-off is closer to the 12 weeks required by law rather than the current average of 43 (48 in London).
One of those initiatives was the creation of a new centralised ‘innovation team’ charged with directly addressing those key new build projects. He has also created a ‘bundling process’ for several applications to speed up the initial process and brought in account managers to work directly with major developers, while starting to overhaul an antiquated IT system.
“I need to prove this works, of course, otherwise I won’t be here [in this role] next year,” he added with a smile.
Red lines
Roe said there could also be some adjustments made to the regulations, but he would not abandon certain ‘red lines’ which include the two stairway rule – as a former fire officer he believes this to be vital for swift evacuation – and the 18m height set to define HRBs which it would be “unforgiveable to row back on” as it was a specific response to Grenfell.
And, while acknowledging the frustrations of many in the industry, he urged people not to lose sight of “why we are doing this…which is to ensure what I witnessed that night cannot happen again”. He also pointed out that some people were being “a bit cavalier with their [planning] applications because they still think they are in the old system”.
He urged clients to take a long-term approach. “Don’t think about the cost now, think about the cost in the future because [it] always finds you in the end.”
He also said the Regulator was “thinking long and hard about competence – this is not an abstract issue to us, and the industry needs more credibility”. A lot of this work is being led by Jon Vanstone and his Industry Competence Committee, and Roe said there would need to be a common method for assessing competence.
They are looking seriously at a professional licensing scheme for Principle Contractors and the conference also heard that digital CSCS cards would become increasingly important as they can capture comprehensive competence data in real time.
Client behaviour was also a key discussion point, with Sisk CEO Paul Brown pointing out that they were looking for clarity about time and delivery “otherwise they will go and invest in something else”.
“They want to invest in quality assets so most welcome the [building safety] legislation and can see how it will add value to those built assets,” he added. “[So] we need to build well and that means retaining the supply chain, but the danger is [some] will go somewhere else where the barriers to entry are lower.”
Brown also pointed out that checking and validation, not just assessing competence, was critical. “Competent people can have an off day too. People miss things or might not have been there when something was done.”
“Clients can no longer procure and forget – those days are gone,” he added.
Enforcement
This supports one of the key findings from BESA’s second annual survey of the sector’s response to the Building Safety Act supported by Barbour ABI. Members believe there needs to be stronger enforcement of the legislation to get the message over to clients that there will be penalties if they fail to meet their responsibilities – including trying to pass too much risk down their supply chains. That will be set out in BESA’s forthcoming Clients’ Guide to the Building Safety Act due to be published soon and in collaboration with several other sector bodies.
The survey also revealed the full extent of the gap between “vision and action”. While 78% of respondents said improving building safety was a top priority for their organisations, only half of those thought they had done enough to achieve compliance.
Our report: ‘Turning Awareness into Action’ also found that just 39% of micro and small companies were even aware of the Act and its consequences and one in five respondents, who did know about the Act, said they were still unclear about their roles and responsibilities.
Most respondents to the survey said there was an urgent need for more guidance, practical support and mandated training to help them achieve compliance.
Roe has urged the industry to also make better use of the guidance that is already available from the Regulator but admitted it was often hard for people to find what they are looking for – and this would be a priority for the revamp of the information and communication system.
BESA’s response will be to continue producing more guidance and promoting what is already out there including our widely welcomed Play it Safe campaign, as part of our collaboration with the Regulator to help them fix the system.
While awareness of the Act is relatively high across BESA membership, companies also tell us that there is a lack of consistent understanding of what is needed in practice. They would welcome mandatory training leading to a set of specific qualifications in line with the Act.
This could be supported by practical tools to help achieve compliance such as templates, checklists and phased compliance roadmaps, helping smaller firms, in particular, to benchmark their progress and manage their resources.
Delegates at last week’s conference were impressed by Roe’s honesty about the problems at the Regulator and his clarity of purpose to reform it at pace. It should serve as something of a rallying cry for the industry and a sign of better things to come.
The BESA survey is available for free download here.