Building Safety Act Podcasts

David Frise: Hello. I'm David Frise, Chief Executive of BESA. Welcome to Behind the Built Environment, the podcast where I delve into the major issues facing our industry through in-depth conversations with key industry leaders. Join us as we explore the trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the future of the built environment. Today our guest is Steven Boyd.

Steven Boyd: Good morning.

David: Good morning, Steven. Steven Boyd has worked in property and infrastructure for over 30 years, leading on major change programmes and on the management of complex national and international estates. As a former head of the British Army Estate and at one time responsible for Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and a former Chief Executive of the Government Property Agency, he has a hands-on experience of asset management and the maintenance of complex and varied portfolios.

An engineer by training, he has a long-term commitment to improving efficiency in the built environment, especially through supply chain collaboration and using data to enable better and faster decisions. He now balances his time between non-executive, strategic advisory, and consultancy roles. Welcome, Steven, again.

Steven: Thank you.

David: Thank you for joining us today.

Steven: It's amazing what you can get with an internet scrape, isn't it?

David: Yes, indeed. Can we kick off, and we're going to come to the five short questions in a second, but can we kick off really? If you could tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up joining the Army and specifically as an engineer?

Steven: Oh, joining the Army was a great thing to do, but it happened by accident. I went along to meet the interview guy and he said, ''What regiment do you want to join?'' I said, ''I've no idea. What regiments are there?'' He asked me what A-levels I was doing and sent me along to the Royal Artillery. I was interviewed by a very agey gentleman. I thought that's not for me. I then went along to meet the Royal Engineers and was late for my interview, but they took pity on me and took me to a pub for the interview, and I thought this is the job for me.

I've been in construction and property and facilities management since then.

David: It's a route you'd recommend for anybody?

Steven: Oh, absolutely. I love being in the Army. There comes a point where you get rather too old for it, but fantastic opportunities, some of the biggest projects, great work, and really enjoyable.

David: Some of the best friendships you'll ever make.

Steven: You have to rely on your colleagues, and your colleagues rely on you, and that camaraderie sticks.

David: Let's crack on with the five, or six, in this case, quickfire questions, which simply require a yes-no answer.

Steven: You're getting your value for money with six.

David: We are indeed. Does the current regulatory regime support the goal of delivering high-quality built environment for the long term?

Steven: No, not really.

David: Does the approach of government departments to the built environment hinder the delivery of culture change in construction?

Steven: In some cases, yes, I'm afraid it does.

David: Does the built environment sector have a suitably skilled workforce to meet its long-term challenges?

Steven: No, not yet.

David: Yes, no, remember? Is offsite the future of the sector?

Steven: Yes.

David: Does BIM work for the sector as a whole?

Steven: Not for the sector as a whole, no, it doesn't.

David: Thank you for that. We will get back to some of those questions in a minute. I'd like to start off with the Building Safety Act, if I may because we've recently done a survey that showed while there was an awareness of the Building Safety Act, and that's rising, it was widely ignored by industry's clients at the moment, particularly on the operational side. Many believe their responsibilities and risk can be delegated to others. Is that your experience? Do you believe that clients think this is the, shall we say, the Construction Safety Act or the Building Safety Act, and therefore doesn't apply to the lifecycle of a building?

Steven: Listen, the Building Safety Act is a good thing. I think it's a great step forward. There's perhaps more to do. When you introduce something new, it always takes a little while to settle. Building Safety Act, I think in this case, building means asset. This is about the safety of the asset, not the Construction Safety Act. You always get that slight confusion with that word. I think important that it's designers, constructors, in occupation and also refurbishment. Inevitably, it's the whole life of assets, particularly high-risk assets. That means that clients need to take it seriously. Of course, many do certainly. I know that clients in government are, but it will take a while to settle. There's probably some education there to be done.

David: I know we said I'd talk about the operational, and I'll come on to that in a minute because I think there's some interesting stuff there. Do you think the industry is growing increasingly frustrated by the amount of regulation, which it thinks is hindering its ability to, was it just get on with things? Gateway 2 is proving to be a huge bottleneck in particular. Do you think there is frustration growing across the sector?

Steven: I think there is a little bit of frustration. I'm not sure I'd say was growing. Industry is demonstrated pretty well that it couldn't manage itself and the government to give some guiding hand on how to do things better. That's the first thing to recognise. Then second thing, as I mentioned before, when something is new, there's always a little bit of resistance. I do think the Building Safety Act is a good thing. There is quite a lot of regulation, though, and I'm not sure that all of it is as aligned as it could be.

I'm not sure that the bodies responsible for assurance are necessarily as joined up as they could be. There is potential for confusion there. As the Act begins to work through and the Construction Products Regulator comes in too, I think there's an opportunity to try and be clearer about how the various bodies and the various regulation all works together so that you don't have people duplicating and doing wasted effort, but I think generally good direction of travel.

David: Do you think in, say, five years' time, we'll see a tangible difference? Or is it longer than that, do you think?

Steven: Oh, no, I think we will see a tangible difference but will that be the end of the journey? I doubt it.

David: Is there a danger that with such a heavy focus on safety and fire safety in particular, we end up designing and constructing buildings that are safe for fire, but not necessarily the best building for people's well-being and health? Ventilation being an obvious thing.

Steven: That's my point, in that you can find regulations about most of the important things about a building, and those have got to be joined up and brought together so that you get the best overall while still being safe. I think the Building Safety Regulator has a real opportunity to help with that.

David: One example of just around government and how they are managing the estate, the government has vowed to transform the NHS. Our healthcare infrastructure is crumbling. Maintenance budgets are not adequate at the moment. I think last week it was reported that the backlog on maintenance now exceeds the annual estate management budget and is growing. Surely the government needs to focus on fixing this if the system has any chance of meeting the commitments to patients and staff.

Steven: Yes, listen, that's a real concern, not just in the health sector, but also for prisons and lots of other asset types. I think all big clients struggle with capital projects on one hand and operations on the other and joining the two up, I think it's common for there to be different teams and different supply chains that supports new works and operations and maintenance. You might say that's the client's fault, but it isn't. It's more to do with that's the way the industry's set up. Clients have to respond in that way. That can mean left hand doesn't know what right hand's doing.

It should be possible to use lots of the good work that's been seen on capital projects over the last, say, 10 or 15 years, and carry that forward into operations and maintenance. There are various reasons why that is a challenge, but it's not an undoable thing. It should be a doable thing. Taking a whole life whole estate view about the health estate, for instance, could make a real difference. I personally think you could end up spending less money and getting a better result.

David: One of the areas you were focusing on though is that transition between construction and operation. Certainly, our members see this throughout the lack of commissioning, the complex way in which we hand over buildings and the data, and the clients not knowing what they need, so they ask for everything. The whole thing is a bit of a mess all the way through. Can you tell us a bit about the work you've been doing to try and improve that, particularly when you were at the Government Property Agency?

Steven: It is a little bit of a mess. When I first encountered different approaches in construction and facilities management 10 years plus ago, I was amazed that they were different. I said, ''Well, we'll just change this. We'll just sort it out. Why can't we do it? Oh, no, don't touch that, because it's just too difficult.'' That red rag to a bull. Made some good progress on that. Firstly, when I was with HMRC, and then more laterally with the Government Property Agency, to try and work with the various data classification and data standards groups to get some alignment.

The data that is generated during design and construction, which is generally pretty good, is not completely lost at handover. Whilst lots of that information is gathered, and there's lots of work done on handover, a few months after the handover, normally, a great deal of that has been lost, which is such a shame and such a waste of money, and means that having a genuine whole life perspective is really quite a challenge.

Breaking that glass ceiling is something that I'm passionate about. I think he's very doable. I hope that we can see some progress on that shortly because if you can do that, then that not only means that you're delivering more efficiently through the life of an asset, but it starts to address some of the problems you were talking about before where you've got a discontinuity between construction and operations.

If you can make that handover work smoothly, then that helps to bring the two together and you get a more joined-up view across the whole estate and all the money you're spending because currently there tend to be different buckets of you spending this on operations and this on capital works and government, like any organisation, capital works are sexy, aren't they? Big shiny new thing that looks good, whereas operation's not quite as attractive, say, but both of them are important and if you don't look after your assets through its life, which might be 30, 50 longer years, then that will come back to bite you.

Not just in a very big backlog maintenance bill, but also safety issues, wellbeing issues, health issues, general staff and employee, and patient satisfaction. That's not a sensible thing to do.

David: Do we need a new term other than maintenance? Because if you maintain something and it's working in the way it's always worked, which says, ''If I don't do it, it's still working, I've maintained it?''

Steven: Maintenance is important and I'm not sure I'd start running around trying to change the name there, but I don't think it's enough. You need a broader approach, looking at how the whole asset can be sustained over time and that includes replacing parts of the assets and upgrading parts of the assets from time to time on a life cycle basis and life cycle planning tends to be very weak, weaker than maintenance, and importantly today, not just is life cycle important, but taking those opportunities to upgrade facilities so they're more carbon efficient, carbon net zero interventions too, joining life cycle and carbon net zero interventions together. That's an increasingly important part of an asset's life.

David: We're filming this or recording this the day after Storm Bert has just gone through and paralysing much of the West Coast rail line or certainly from the West Country. It's a growing challenge of having to adopt our existing building stock so that it's actually able to cope with temperature fluctuations, flooding and increasingly air pollution. Is this, do you think, on building managers' radars?

Steven: It's definitely on building managers' radars and it's definitely on asset managers' radars. I think part of the challenge for them is this all sounds really difficult. Where should I start? Looks expensive. How could I do it? I think getting to a complete net zero building is really difficult, perhaps even impossible, but doing some things that will make a difference, you can start tomorrow reasonably low cost with short payback times. Getting started on the easy things, whether it's lighting or lighting controls, whether it's PV or insulation, those things are quite straightforward to do before you start getting sucked into the important challenges of removing fossil fuels from a building.

Then, as you point out, there's the challenge of the mitigation of the effects of climate change. It will be hotter. It will be wetter from time to time. What are you going to do about that? Adjusting the duty points on your cooling, for instance, choosing a better cooling system, shading your building, better insulation are all things that can be done from a temperature point of view. Then from a flood mitigation point of view, don't have a building in the flood plane. That would be a good start.

If you are in a place where it might flood, do you have to have all your important stuff on the ground floor? Maybe move the expensive things up a bit. If you do flood, you don't want to, but at least make the recovery from that as pain-free as it can possibly be.

David: We talked a little bit about BIM particularly, but digital construction tools in particular, how can they be used to help us develop and design and build better buildings than we currently do? What do you think is not happening that should happen in that area?

Steven: For me, it's about bringing together data. There's lots and lots of data collected, huge amounts of data collected in new construction, and probably even more collected in operations, but quite often it's in silos. Sometimes it's in proprietary software and it's difficult to bring together. Adopting an open and interoperable approach, bringing data together so that it can support decision-making. That's a technical challenge that's certainly very doable, but then there's also a leadership challenge of what do you want to achieve? What's important? What are your priorities?

Once it's clear what the desired outcomes are, then structuring that data so it can answer those questions, help you make decisions faster, better, so that you can spend less, emit less carbon, have more satisfied employees. All those things sound expensive. Actually, I think in lots of cases, it's really quite possible to do all of those things for less cost if you're making decisions on the basis of hard evidence rather than supposition.

David: Do you think, and we're going to link this to the Building Safety Act, so the problems at the moment of a bottleneck at Gateway 2, but do you think longer term that will help BIM in particular in that currently we very quickly migrate into build and design? Will this force us to go into design and build in a true sense, which would then open us up to more offsite?

Steven: It might help. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. We'll see what the workload looks like with everybody having to have their proposals checked. For me, going back to my particular passion, there's possibly more to do with when you're moving into operations. Do you then have the information necessary? I'm really pleased to see the whole life information management that's in the BSA, particularly their safety golden thread. I think it applies to everything. You gather the right information during design and construction, carry that through into operations, and use that to make the building more successful over its lifetime.

Importantly, when you refurbish things, that's got to modify and update things. I think there's not been enough focus on refurbishment in the past. I think that will change. A lot of the buildings, I think it's 80% of the buildings we have today will still be in use in 2050. That means there'll be quite a bit of refit and refurbishment between now and then. I think the industry needs to do more to move away from design and construction, full stop, new paragraph, operations. That needs to be more of a continuity and recognise that there are quite major projects and refurbishments that take place during the life of an asset.

There are lots of parts of the industry that could respond to that. One of my favourite ones is REBA. Their plan of work is great. Lots of people use it. Six stages during a new project, during capital construction, one stage during operations. Not even operations and refurbishment, not even two stages. Come on, guys. If you're listening out, REBA, let's have an additional stage, at least one more.

David: Good point. Just one point on offsite, which we mentioned at the very beginning, and there's been a lot of talk about and also some very high-profile failures in that area, mainly because of the cyclic nature of demand. Is it really the future of the built environment, do you think, and are there limitations?

Steven: I'd challenge the language a little bit. On-site, off-site is a little bit binary. I think we should have a little bit more of an assembly line mentality, thinking about how you start with raw materials and they get integrated to create products, and then those products are integrated to create components, and those-- You see my direction of travel. If you went back to the medieval times, raw materials came to site, they were all integrated on the site to produce a building.

The 20th century approaches, I think cathedral builders would recognise that still a lot of raw materials coming to site, some products coming to site where materials have been pre-integrated, but still a lot of work is done on-site. I think there will be more work done off-site, but not necessarily in a single off-site place. Multiple off-site places to create a assembly line where raw materials and products are iteratively integrated so that there is less raw materials coming to site, and perhaps that should be a challenge.

How little raw materials can you have coming to site so that you're bringing pre-integrated products and assemblies to site where they can be brought together? Putting things together in the pouring rain in November is not a good idea.

David: Things are becoming more and more complex to build and to maintain. We talked a bit about the skill sets required for that. What do you think the long-term-- particularly on the engineering services side, what do you think the skill sets that people will require to be able to-- Let's talk about the maintenance in the operation.

Steven: There's green skills to start with. I think there's a general need to understand better where carbon is embodied and where carbon is used, so I think that applies to the whole industry. I think if you look at operations, in particular, facilities management, asset management, then there is a big step-up required in digital skills. If you look at it in the round, somewhere behind where design and construction is, that needs to catch up, and that would be a big step towards having a more whole-life perspective. It's not that people in FMO operations don't want to do that. They do, but there's work to be done to help that, not just their education and training, but also the software platforms that support that area of the sector are not always suitable for taking a proper whole-life digital approach. Then there's also that glass ceiling I mentioned before which takes place at a practical completion which we need to smash through.

David: Do you see the fragmentation of the industry as a problem to getting that holistic approach to --

Steven: [crosstalk] Yes, for sure, the industry is fragmented, far too fragmented. I can't wave a magic wand over that. I was looking at some of the consultation that had been done to support the Building Safety Act and that's led to the creation of 13 sector-led groups, so those 13 different sectors, but the consultation also took place with over 60 professional institutions and associations. That just seems like an awful lot. I suppose my view is whilst some reduction in the number of different bodies will be good, that might not happen quickly, so I'm keen on more collaboration between those bodies where that's possible and I think there's lots of scope for that.

Then also my interest in data is the backdoor to that. If you can get everybody using an end-to-end data set, there's a single version of the truth, then that makes collaboration easy and the fact that the different organisations are fragmented is perhaps less important. It might lead to some more integration between those organisations, but that's from my point of view, not the main aim. It's getting the whole sector to be more productive. I think there's a lot of scope to be more productive.

David: That's a great segue into the work you've been doing recently around the FM Alliance. Could you tell us a little bit about what that work is and what your hopes are for it?

Steven: Yes, I don't want to go too far on that because the bodies involved have not agreed to anything at the moment, but they have demonstrated in a number of projects over years, ones that I've been responsible for and others, that the data can be better aligned and that when it is better-aligned everything works better. We've seen iterative improvements across a number of areas and now there's talk about could that way of working be formalised and people agree to collaborate in an extended way over time and that can only be a good thing.

Here we're talking about a genuine whole-life approach, so the data classifications and data standards that are used in design and construction and those that are used in operations lifecycle replacement and also whole-life carbon, if all of those things can be brought together with cost, what a lot of time would be saved, just wasted effort mapping and changing and recalculating and misunderstandings would be a lot less. Why not do that and I'm hopeful that those organisations will continue to work together and that we might achieve some agreement that say, look, we're going to sign up to working together in the long term. We'll keep working on that, and perhaps we'll achieve something. Watch this space.

David: Steven, you and I have both been through the transition from a military background into civilian. What struck you most when you came out? I think your last job was managing Camp Bastion.

Steven: No, my last job was I was head of the Army State-- Director of Infrastructure for the Army. The Camp Bastion thing keeps coming back, which was quite a long time ago now, but to be honest, I don't mind it coming back. That was just such a fantastic job. Go and build me a small town. How long have I got? Not very long. How much money have you got? How much do you need? Get on with it. That was a brilliant job, everything from obviously accommodation, headquarters and communications.

That goes without saying, but we built an international standard airfield, we built a heliport, two hospitals, all sorts of facilities. Water supply being the most challenging. Helmand is one of the driest places on earth and securing water from deep wells was a real challenge and one that fortunately for my future career came good.

David: A fascinating story. You came out of that where you tell people, you give them an order, effectively I think is a bit of a misnomer that people obey orders in the way that I think people perceive of the military, but you come out of that into the civilian world and you tell someone to do something and then you go, sorry you didn't do it? Why not? How did you adapt to that?

Steven: Yes, it's definitely, as you know, not as it's portrayed and I think people these days with-- there's comparatively few people serving in the forces gain their impression of what it might be like from Hollywood films which are not even a good representation of what happens in the US Army, never mind in the British Army and for us, as you know, it's, ''This is the thing I'd like you to do, not this is how I'm going to tell you how to do it, just go away and do it.''

If you take Camp Bastion for a moment and you might say that the Permanent Joint Headquarters doesn't have a lot of expertise in construction but even putting that to one side there are some great people in that organization, no one told me what to do, just go away and do it.

David: Yes, it's a popular misconception.

Steven: I will pass on the same thing to my team hopefully, yes, come back if you need a bit of help but go away and do it.

David: Final question, are you optimistic about the future or are you pessimistic about the future?

Steven: I am optimistic. I am definitely a glass-half-full person. I always think it's possible to do things that other people say maybe it's not. It might take a little bit longer than you would like but I am optimistic, yes.

David: This is an unfair question because I haven't prepared you for this at all but if you were able to do one thing that would make a difference, what would that be?

Steven: I'm on joining up the data. I'm on definitely joining up the data and then once you've done that, you can exploit that data and you can realize some real productivity benefits and we can do that quickly with the right will.

David: Steven Boyd, thank you once again for joining us today.

Steven: Thank you, David.

David Frise: Hello, my name is David Frise, Chief Executive of BESA. Welcome to Behind the Built Environment, the podcast where I delve into the major issues facing our industry through in-depth conversations with key industry leaders. Join us as we explore the trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the future of the built environment. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Nick Mead. Welcome, Nick.

Nick Mead: Hello, David.

David: Nick is the technical director for MEICA Systems at Laing O'Rourke, and also chair of the BESA Building Safety Act Advisory Group. Nick joined Laing O'Rourke back in May 2017 as a chief engineer. He is an experienced chartered engineer with over 45 years in contracting and consulting. Nick has a wealth of experience in a wide range of sectors and has worked within many industry bodies covering fire and technical issues.

Most recently, his role has been to support the business through the Building Safety Act and changes in CE marking. Between 2015 and '16, Nick held the position of CIBSE president. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Engineering and is a fellow of CIBSE and the IMechE. Again, welcome, Nick.

Nick: Thank you.

David: Thanks for joining us today. A long career.

Nick: Very long, yes. Very enjoyable, though.

David: That's good. If you get to the end of your career and you think it's been enjoyable, that's something. You're not quite at the end yet.

Nick: Not yet. No.

David: We kick this off with some quick-fire yes-no answers. Say yes or no, please. Not as easy as it sounds. Interestingly, we had Lorna Stimpson on from Building Control as our first one, and we asked her five questions on the Building Safety Act. I'm going to ask you the same five questions and hopefully, you give the same answers. Question 1, is the Building Safety Act the most important change in construction in your career?

Nick: Yes.

David: Does it cover all buildings?

Nick: Yes.

David: Yes. We'll come back to that, obviously. Is everyone in construction impacted?

Nick: Yes.

David: Will the Building Safety Act result in behavioural change in the industry?

Nick: Yes.

David: Will the industry be better because of it in five years?

Nick: Yes.

David: Do good companies who are competent and compliant have anything to fear from the Building Safety Act?

Nick: No.

David: We're on to the main body of the questions. You can do more than yes and no from here on. First off, so as a tier 1 contractor, one of the largest contractors in the UK, you're at the front line of the Building Safety Act. How are you adapting to what was described as the biggest change? You've agreed the biggest change in your career. How are you adapting to that at Laing O'Rourke?

Nick: It feels like I've got a small army on it, to tell you the truth. We've really put a lot of effort into this. We've been really fortunate that the company have recognised the significance of the change, and we've adopted a small team to pull this together and work across it, not only internally with our own procedures but to support industry and work with others to see how we can manage the change, but also look at how we work up and down. Up in our consultants, our design partners, our clients, and then down through the supply chain, manufacturing, and everything. A lot of work. I think we're in a good place but we're at the beginning of a long journey.

David: It must be considerable investment on the part that you want to do this.

Nick: Yes, considerable investment. I'm really grateful to be part of it and the support that the company has given us all internally but allowed us to also to work with industry and share and help develop industry. It's been a really good journey.

David: We were discussing, off-air, before we started, about the highly fragmented industry that construction is and engineering services in. How is that being disseminated down through the supply chain, and do you believe that they're listening and adapting?

Nick: It varies in a lot of the sectors and the areas you work in. I think those who are most impacted, particularly those who have design responsibilities, the sprinklers and the fire alarm, they're recognising what they've got to do and the impact of it. I think some companies are working with it. I think the problem the supply chain has is typical government information is quite open to interpretation, and it's how do they get their understanding of it, particularly smaller ones who don't have large budgets. We're trying to work with them to support them and bring them on the journey but it's so variable across the board depending on who you're working with.

David: Is that a danger for the industry?

Nick: Yes. I think in the tier 1 sector where we're working with it, I think, as the industry goes down and you start looking at tier 2s and tier 3s and people affected with it, I think it'll be a lot of hard work for some people and I hope that the regulatory doesn't come down too hard on people who just don't have that capacity or capability to develop it.

David: How about up the supply chain, shall we say, amongst clients and the professional teams that you take designs off?

Nick: Yes, it's an interesting one. A lot of clients, they are more intelligent now—not being rude to clients—but they understand more, understanding more their impact on it. I think where we have to get through it and where this is all stemmed from is we can't keep going bottom line fastest programme. All this now has an impact on what we price and what we programme to do, and make that clear to the client and to the professional team for the client.

I think the consultants and the architects have got a big learning curve. We, thankfully, should go back to design and build with this, and not this, "Well, it's good enough to start on site and we'll tweak it as we go along and we change things," and then we argue about the cost and get it designed, get it sorted and build it. the IKEA pack-type approach, "There's the pack, just go and build it."

I think that will be great for the industry. The client might struggle because that ability to change his mind as he goes along will be much harder for them, but it's got to be a better way to build a building.

David: Yes, I can't disagree with that. Is it a recipe, at the moment, though for indecision? I can't make a decision because I don't really know what my liabilities are going to be?

Nick: Everything's slowed down. The industry has slowed down. The two-staircase rule brought chaos into the industry. We see a lot of government projects in that process because they recognise that they've got to be more sure in their design and output before we can start on-site.

I think it's going to help a lot of the contracting industry because they have that skill set to be involved earlier to support the consultancies. That will be a better approach to how we go. We're in that journey now, and we talk about HRBs and non-HRBs. The Building Safety Act is quite specific in what it's defining, but the industry has got to recognise the massive amount of regulatory change that's gone on that affects everything we do in the construction industry, and that will be the hard part.

David: I'd like to come on to that bit of it. It's not just the Building Safety Act. Before I get to that, what's your view on how long it will take to settle down so that you have a period where we're no longer saying, "Well, I don't know what the law's going to really be interpreted in that way." Are we talking 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?

Nick: It's a very difficult call. I would hope we won't be talking Building Safety Act in five years. I think that's when we get that business as usual. Some sectors will move quicker because they're forced to. Some will try and understand where regulations are affecting them and responsibilities affecting them. The day job will take time to get there. Some sectors, probably two, two and a half years. The industry as a whole will probably be about five years, a few.

David: Going back to that question around what else other than the Building Safety Act, I've noted, in the Building Safety Act, you make the point of saying it's not just the Building Safety Act. There are other changes coming down the line that you need to be aware of.

Nick: The Building Safety Act is all about what they call the high-risk buildings. It is predominantly residential. It talks about care homes and hospitals, and hospital's a bit of a hybrid in the gateway process. The Building Safety Act on its own is only an ability to create change. It's a tool for government to bring other regulatory change. There are masses of them. They've changed the number of the building regulations and they are changing more. Building regulations affect every building.

There's the Fire Reform Act. There's the architects bill. There's the procurement bills. All these things are coming on through it on the back of the Building Safety Act. It's every building that we build, every structure that we build, has an influence of those rules and regulations. I think that's where some people might struggle in thinking, "Well, it doesn't apply to me."

If they're not up to date with all the regulatory changes and standards and things like that, it's going to keep going. That's probably going back to the last question, why I think it's five years, is we will still see changes in those regulations and standards that we'll adapt as we learn more.

David: In that vein, do you see a danger that the industry will be highly focused on making buildings safe for fire, and in doing so, they'll make them airtight, sealed, but actually won't ventilate them properly, for example, and we end up causing another problem as a result of too high a focus on one thing?

Nick: This is a problem we have with all rules and regulations and things, you've got the fire safety and types of insulation and things like that, but Part L energy is out there, we've still got part M, there's lots of things going on, and I think that's where you've got to try and look at where they all work for your project. Then how do you agree where there's a conflict? Because they will have a conflict. Insulation and fire rating of insulation, and types of insulation. You've got to look at what's the aim, and then you've got to agree that process with the building control officer to say, "Well, these are my conflicts, we think that's more important, so we're going to drive that." That's where the industry will have to get that skill set and knowledge developed in the whole industry.

David: We've just had a change of government, the sun has come out. Previous government were pretty sanguine in the fact they said, "Well, we've brought the Building Safety Act, we've done our bit. Over to you as an industry to develop that." Do you see the new government having the same attitude or do you think they will be more hands-on at this point?

Nick: I don't think so, I think they were still-- The Hackitt review always said industry had to change it, it was industry who would have to drive change, and they've got to. They're the people with the skill set. The civil servants and the government, they're not contractors, and builders, and building services engineers, they write a standard, typical with all regulations and guidance, is guidance, and it points you in a direction.

Providing we can, as an industry, work together with the likes of BEEs and things like that, give the industry a route to travel, then we should be able to do it. We don't need anything too rigid, because it stifles us, and also then if it goes wrong, that's why it's quite vague. I think it is up to industry. I don't see the government bringing in specialists and saying, "This is what you're going to do, this is how you're going to build it." It'll be up to us who have the skill set to go and make it work.

David: That's a great segue into the next question, which is really about skills, or SKEB—Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Behaviours, an unfortunate acronym that really, but in the quickfire questions, will it change behaviours, you said yes. Can you expand a bit upon that? How do you think that's going to change behaviours?

Nick: That will be the hardest thing for our industry, the culture of our industry. I think, for too long, now we've been forced into a position where we are building it quickly, we have the lovely term "value engineering," we're all about getting it quicker and faster. Change control will be very important now, and how we manage change. I've been doing it for 40 years, culture has got to go. I think there's going to be far more need for having systems and procedures in place and processes, understanding who's responsible for those decisions and processes, and people recognising, if they do something, what is the consequence of them doing it.

Quite often in the contracting world, we'll change a wall type without realising that the fire stopping, the fire damper now, doesn't become compliant. There's got to be far more integration. In the building services world, we build systems. A pipe doesn't work on its own without it going into a heating system. We have to think of buildings as systems now, and system engineering is the way our industry has got to survive and develop and strive to get through that.

Knowledge is good, we have good knowledge in our industry, we can prove paper qualifications. It's the culture skill set and proving competency, and what is competent, and who assesses, who is competent to assess someone as competent. That's the steep climb I think we've got.

David: Does it require everybody within the supply chain to be responsible for their own element of work? I'm trying to get to the point of-- there's often a cry for we need more clerk of works, we need them to come back in, but didn't that engender a feeling that if the clerk of works hadn't spotted it, we've got away with it? Isn't it now the responsibility of every contractor to evidence how they've been compliant?

Nick: Yes, I think everybody's responsible for their own actions. They need to be aware of the consequence of their action on others, you can't just change something because it suits you, or put something in a different place because it's easy. We've got to be better at how we go to work, and own what we take on-site.

David: You mentioned earlier about value engineering, something that delivers no value and little engineering, by and large. Do you see that the gateways, in particular, will see the end of value engineering as it's currently employed?

Nick: It will help it a lot, because if you are changing something between the gateway, you've got to prove that it's still compliant, meets the regulations and standards, and isn't just done for cheapness and cost. That will help, and I think, by having far more detail at gateway 2 before you start on-site, will give greater opportunity to get it right. Value engineering is a fantastic term we just use for getting it done cheaper, but what we've got to make sure is that, if that is done between gateway 1 and 2, it's managed properly and it's defined properly, and we still end up with something that is compliant and safe, and to a quality we expect it to.

David: If you were, let's say, building safety regulator for a day, is there one thing you would do that would make everything happen quicker, shall we say, or more effectively or efficiently?

Nick: Make sure people have read the rules, and know who they sit in a team.

David: How would you do that?

Nick: I think it's meeting with the right people, it's making sure you can sit down at the beginning of a project, make sure everybody understands their role and responsibility and how they're going to develop through the life of the project.

David: You hear an awful lot about, "We're just waiting for the building safety regulator to prosecute someone properly, and then everything will fall into place because people say, 'Oh, you're taking it seriously.'" Do you go with that view?

Nick: I think there's a little bit of that out there. I think people are nervous as to what level they will come down. I think this Building Safety Act will have to do something with impact to make people aware. Hopefully, it won't be too severe, and it won't be on the wrong people. It's a difficult call at the moment because I don't think we'll see things for a while. Where the building safety regulator, I think, will flex their muscles is in a chain control, and they will impose an 8 or 12-week hold to make sure something is picked up and changed. I think that's where they'll work first, hopefully before we go into the standing somebody in court, nothing serious.

David: Yes, fundamentally, this is about doing the right thing, isn't it, in the industry? Making sure everyone is both safe and the building's there for the long term, not short-term gain, which is the big culture change, I guess. Are you an optimist or a pessimist about this in the future?

Nick: No, I'm an optimist. This is great for our industry, how it used to be. We get back into the pride, deliver really something you can walk by and go, "I worked on that project, I'm proud of it."

David: I think that's a big thing. People come into work to do a great job, and we get in the way, stop them doing it. Finally, Nick, you're chair of the BESA Building Safety Act group. What does that involve, and what does the group do?

Nick: It brings the M&E contractors together who are working in this area. It opens good discussion for people to, not raise their concerns, but openly talk without fear of thinking, "Well, am I going to be branded? I don't know what's going on." It's a great forum for people just to talk and discuss on how we, as a group, through BESA can support not only to the tier 1 M&E contractors, but right through down to the smaller groups, and bring everybody on board to bring the building services along in line with compliance and regulatory standard.

David: You've recently launched a campaign in the group.

Nick: Yes, the playbook, I think it's really good. The trouble with the regulations is you could give it to five people to read and you'll get seven interpretations of that regulation. I think the playbook is really good because it enables people to understand how the construction industry works from right through to the client, down to the end of maintenance and handover, but puts it into the relationship of the football world from the owner of the club, down to the linesmen, and things like that, and how their people will relate to it.

It puts it in a very simple language that just gives some clarity on where people fit. If you imagine how clockwork a football team runs and how important everybody is in that team, it recognises it. In the construction side, everybody's as important. It's a really useful tool for people to understand.

David: Back to that, everybody needs to evidence their compliance.

Nick: Yes.

David: Now I know I said finally, but finally, finally, I'd like to do a little roundup to make sure that I've understood and hopefully our audience have understood and interpreted what you've said today makes sense. The Building Safety Act is the biggest change in construction in a generation, probably several generations. Yes, definitely. It has an impact upon all buildings, some more than others, and it certainly will bleed into others over a period of time.

Nick: Definitely, yes.

David: Everybody in construction needs to sit up and pay attention to this, because it's going to impact you no matter what you do on site.

Nick: Definitely, yes.

David: I'd add to that I think many people don't recognise change that's come as the Building Safety Act, but it's the Building Safety Act that's driven it. It may come from Laing O'Rourke, for example, now asking me to do this. It's the Building Safety Act that's driven it. The Building Safety Act, you're going to have to change your behaviours without a doubt. That's everybody if we're going to deliver a built environment that works and is safe.

The good news is the industry is going to be better because of it in five years. It has to be better where good companies can thrive, because the playing field is effectively level. There is nothing to fear for good companies. They can find out everything they need to know through your group on the BESA website.

Nick: That's right.

David: Great. Nick Mead of Laing O'Rourke, thank you very much.

Nick: Thank you, David.

[music]

David: Now the podcast news. As discussed earlier with Nick, we're thrilled to finally launch the BESA Play it Safe Guide. The football-themed interactive resource explains what your roles and responsibilities are in relation to your position on the pitch. We've taken all the massive information which is out there, simplified it, and made it relatable to you as a contractor, and your supply chain within the building engineering services sector. Visit thebesa.com/play-it-safe to download your free copy now if you're a member.

What should BESA do next when it comes to the Building Safety Act? What further support and guidance do our members need to ensure they are competent and compliant with the Act? Our Building Safety Act, the industry awareness and readiness survey has been launched to help answer these questions and will allow us to accurately gauge levels of awareness and understanding whilst identifying areas needing attention to drive cultural change.

Please complete the survey. It will take no longer than 10 minutes and you will be entered into a prize draw to win a signed and framed Euro 2022 winner Rachel Daly football shirt. Visit thebesa.com/play-it-safe to complete. The deadline is Friday the 30th of August at midnight.

Unfortunately, there's been more news hitting the headlines regarding companies filing for administration and job cuts. The BESA Legal and Commercial team has been busy dealing with member inquiries who may be affected in their supply chain by retentions or unfair contract conditions. BESA membership includes free expert legal advice with no hidden fees, which, when utilised, can exceed the value of your annual membership fee.

There are a number of fact sheets and resources and guidance in the BESA member resource area which can help with managing the risk of insolvency in construction contracts. We also offer BESA members a free introduction to contract law course via our online academy. For more information on that, log into your BESA member resource area, and if you're not a BESA member, we'd like to find out more. Visit thebesa.com/besa-membership.

Finally, the countdown is on for the BESA annual conference which takes place on the 17th of October at the Brewery in London. It's sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric. The one-day conference will set out how to inspire a better building engineering services industry for a safe, sustainable, and efficient future, with a broad programme of technical and topical seminars.

Brand new for this year is our dedicated skill zone which will introduce employers to a comprehensive suite of training services and recruitment support along with a guidance on how to identify and address skills shortages. Tickets are available on our website. BESA members receive a discount, and young engineers can attend for free.

Thank you for tuning in to Behind the Built Environment. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more in-depth conversations with industry leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share with your colleagues. Stay connected with BESA for the latest updates and insight into our industry. Until next time, I'm David Frise, and this has been Behind the Built Environment. Goodbye.

David: Today we're joined by Remi Suzan, MD of Gratte Brothers Limited. Gratte Brothers, one of the UK's leading independent building services companies, set up by Derrick and André Gratte as an electrical contractor in 1946 in Knebworth with £100 of share capital. Three generations later, they are still family-owned with a turnover of over £250 million. Remi took over in April after 20 years in the business. He's been design director, engineering director, as well as deputy managing director. Remi, congratulations on your appointment, and welcome to Behind the Built Environment.

Remi Suzan: Thank you. Pleasure.

David: Now, we like to kick off with just some quickfire questions just to set the thing up. Yes, no, if you possibly can. Building Safety Act, do good companies have anything to fear from the Building Safety Act?

Remi: No.

David: Is offsite the future for the industry?

Remi: Completely, yes.

David: Should M&E contractors do more principal contractor work?

Remi: That's not an easy yes-no. It depends.

David: I'm going to press you.

Remi: If they can, yes.

David: If they can, yes. Great. Does BIM work for the contractors?

Remi: No.

David: How would you describe the current building services market in the UK?

Remi: I think it's very varied for different companies that are operating in different elements of the environment. At Gratte's, we're very focused on the commercial work rather than we don't work in the public sector. I don't really have a view as to what's going on there. We don't really do domestic either, but we commercially work on office blocks, data centers. Data centers has been the big thing for us over the last 20 years. At the moment for us, it's very busy.

David: Very promising then.

Remi: Yes.

David: I think you described in a recent interview we did for the Top 30, you described Gratte Brothers as being in a very stable place. What are your business priorities for Gratte Brothers?

Remi: Most of our work is repeat business. 80% of our turnover is with existing clients. The focus is to keep the existing clients happy so that they want to keep coming back to you. Obviously, we do look to expand our client base, and we will tender work that comes in from those avenues. Generally, it's about repeat business, keeping your client base very happy.

David: You've had a focus on, shall we say, operational improvements like digitalization and those areas. Are they key to you?

Remi: Oh, completely. You've got to move forward. The world is changing very quickly. The industry has moved into BIM and 3D coordination, which is the obvious thing that people think about when it comes to digitalization, but there's so much more to it. There's now the automating programming packages you can use, the dashboards that feed into the management teams from automatically taking data from programmes, from logs such as RFIs, information, all sorts of things.

David: It's essentially the medical jargon, do no harm, first of all, but improve the operational efficiency of the business as you do that?

Remi: Completely. We've taken an operational director that was very IT-based, and we basically gave him that role in the business. He's no longer operational in terms of project work. He's got the title strategic director, and his role is completely looking at new technologies, how we can integrate them into the business and delivering of projects. I think we've always had that, but it always used to be a job for a director that was busy doing his day job. Therefore, it always took forever to bring anything new in because the day job always took over and the improvement things got dropped. By actually taking a director and saying, "Right, you are responsible, and that's all you're going to do," we've ensured that that has progressed continuously.

David: You're using things offsite increasingly to help combat your skill shortage, but also improve quality?

Remi: We've got two offsite facilities. We've got Worthing, and we've got Chelmsford. Worthing is a welding facility, and Chelmsford is what I would call offsite pre-assembly. We're making all sorts of things in Chelmsford, from full electrical risers to distribution boards, to mechanical pipework, pump skids, but we do it all with our own labour. It's actually skilled electricians building it or skilled pipe fitters. There's no de-skilling. People have argued that you could save money, but then that's where you drop off on the quality side of things.

Just the act of how you build in that controlled environment is so much better. They've got, all their tools are all bolted to benches. There's none of this balancing on the edge of a toolbox with a chainsaw or whatever. All of the materials are to hand. You can go to lunch break, and you can just leave your tools next to what you're working. Go to lunch break, come back, rather than having to pack them all up and get them out of the stores or whatever, and you waste hours on a building site. At the moment, I would say that on some of our bigger projects, we're building between 30% and 40% of the projects in Chelmsford, and just delivering it and bolting it into place. The vision is eventually 70% to 80% of the projects.

David: This also helps one of your other challenges, I guess, around sustainability, and your carbon footprint reducing that.

Remi: There's an argument that you're increasing your double handling things because you're having stuff delivered to Chelmsford, you're building it, and then you're moving it again to the site. That petrol or diesel offset is far reduced when you look at the significant reduction in waste because every bit of off-cut is kept at Chelmsford. Then when you need 400 millimetres of a piece of pipe or a piece of conduit, you just go to the rack and you get that 500 millimetres that was an off-cut, where, on-site, it would have ended up in a building site skip.

No, the amount of waste is reduced massively. Like I said, the improvement in production is huge as well. My team at Chelmsford could build an entire electrical distribution board, pre-loom it, pre-test it in a day, where if you were doing it on-site with electricians, you're looking at four or five days' work.

David: It's a significant savings then.

Remi: Significant.

David: An improvement in quality presumably.

Remi: Quality, but also from a client point of view, if you've got an electrical switch room, then I can't start until the builder's build the room, and often painted the floor, put a lock on the door. I'm landlocked, I'm locked, I can't move forward until that room is ready, where, if I build all that off-site, I've disconnected the programme, and then when the room is ready, it takes me three days to fit the room out when it could have been four, five weeks' work.

David: In a sense, it also allows you to take control of the elements that were out of your control in the conventional way of vetting.

Remi: Oh, completely. It decouples the programme, so you can get on with your work, even if you can't get on on-site.

David: Presumably that's where the greatest risk to you is financially, is the programme.

Remi: From the client as well.

David: Yes. Now I'm going to take you right back to the very start now. What drew you to engineering in the first place?

Remi: Absolutely nothing. I knew nothing about what this job is. My father was a chef, he was French, obviously, with a name like Remi there.

David: Certainly, you should be a chef, a famous chef. You said he worked for the Roux brothers, didn't he?

Remi: No, he knew the Roux brothers.

David: He knew?

Remi: He was the head chef of the Savoy Hotel. He came from Paris, he was headhunted, brought over to Paris. He worked in a lot of the West End restaurants and stuff like that. At 16, I was under threat, "You either find a job or you're going to come and work in my kitchen." I would have done absolutely anything than be my father's apprentice. I ended up going to the careers office, which I know you'll have to explain to your viewers what that is because it doesn't exist these days. Basically, at 16, you went to the careers office, you filled in a multiple choice list of questions, they fed it into some very basic computer, and it spat out what jobs you were most suited for.

Mine said either engineering or a policeman. They looked through their Rolodex, which I guess is the old version [crosstalk]

David: [unintelligible 00:09:21]

Remi: An old version of the database, paper version of a database. This lady pulled out a job opportunity for a local company called Benham Building Services. All she said was, "I think it's the tool makers." I had no idea what a tool makers was or what Benham Building Services was. Anyway, I had an interview, my father drove me there, made me take my earrings out and comb my hair. I was packed off in, I did the interview, I had no idea what I was being interviewed for. The guy halfway through it, started talking about plumbing. I'm like, "Oh, plumbing. Yes, I could do that. Yes, that's a trade. It's a good thing to get into." Then he said, "You'd be expected to wear a suit," and I thought that's weird, like it's pretty like posh plumbing. At the end of it, he said, "You've got the job, I'll take you, I'll show you where you work." He brought me up into the drawing office. I had no idea what I'd been interviewed for. I got the job, I started and ended up on-site for six months, strangling pipes and generally being a dog's body to all the tradesmen on-site. Then I was in the office for five years doing an apprenticeship.

David: Now we need a picture of you as a 16-year-old with your earrings.

Remi: I could furnish you with one, but I won't. [laughter] After that, the recession hit, and everyone was being made redundant, so I decided to hide it out at university. I did the traditional way and the academic and came out, and the rest is history.

David: With the knowledge of the tools to help you through the process.

Remi: Exactly.

David: I've got to ask, is the chef skills in the DNA? Are you a cook yourself?

Remi: Oh, yes. I do all the cooking at home.

David: It must have been touch and go there. Was your father not disappointed?

Remi: No, I don't think so. I really enjoy cooking, and ultimately, if I hadn't got that job, I would have been a chef.

David: Well, there we go.

Remi: That's right, yes. One of life's junctions.

David: We talked a bit there about the development of skills and how you develop your skills by doing a bit of on the kit and then at university. As a company, Gratte's has always had a great reputation for training both engineers and apprentices. What do you think has gone wrong with the way we recruit and do our training nowadays?

Remi: Competitive tendering.

David: Competitive tendering.

Remi: The drive to reduce costs. The first thing that gets slashed is training budgets. I did my day release when I was at Benham's at Vauxhall College. I believe that's gone now. There's literally only three colleges in London that you can send people to. I think the industry didn't help itself by focusing entirely on the academic. You can't become a chartered engineer. CIBSE will argue, yes, there is a route for the unqualified, as it were, without a degree, but it's so difficult to navigate that route. Basically, if you want a career in this industry now, you have to have, well, it was an engineering degree, now it's a master's degree.

Therefore, all of the training has come via the academic route. When they come out of university, these graduates, they're more focused to design because that's what the courses are for. I guess, in my generation, all of the trainees came from 16-year-olds joining contractors, doing their time in contracting. Then when they qualified, then they would move into consultancy and bring that practical knowledge to the design side of things. It switched. Basically, all the graduates now go into consultancy, and they don't come back to contracting because why would they?

David: What are you doing at Gratte's to try and overcome that?

Remi: About three years ago, when I first became deputy MD, I introduced, we call it a graduate trainee programme. Basically, what we've done is we've created a full training scheme, which runs all the way from Day 1 over four years. The whole idea is that they work in every section of the business. We've got different entry points. Up until now, what we do is we take our blue-collar apprentices, so the ones that are doing the electricians and the pipework and the plumbing, and our labour manager will basically speak to them when they're in their fourth year, and say, "Are you interested in coming out of the tools and going into the office?"

If we feel that they're made of the right stuff, then we'll bring them in at that point and start them on the four or five-year training programme to bring them through. Again, it means sending them to college, HNC route, rather than a degree route. If they want to after that, then we would be interested in that as well. From my point of view, I think that them coming in at that point with that five years of site knowledge is so valuable to an engineer manager because you can't teach that in a classroom, can't teach somebody how a building site works, how a piece of duct is actually hung up in the air.

David: It gives them those buildability skills that they wouldn't have if they only did the design side.

Remi: Management of labour and all sorts of stuff that academia misses.

David: That's really interesting on the skills side. We talked briefly about off-site before. I know you've got the two facilities at Chelmsford and Worthing. Out of that, what do you think needs to improve to encourage more of that? You see, you hear a lot of off-site specialists, they go bust because it's, they've either got too much work or too little work.

Remi: The reason why I try to avoid the word prefabrication is because that sounds like you're making a product. In order to get your productivity, you want to make a standardized product. If you take someone who makes bathroom pods, then you buy a bathroom pod, and you then have to change the design of the building to fit the pod into it. You can't do that in UK building. Every building is bespoke. It always amazes me, like, you have an architectural consultancy team client, they build a building, they go through all the problems of coordination, getting it right.

Then they build the next building, and they throw everything that they've done away and start from scratch. It's madness. There's nothing standardized in UK building. Every core is different. Every riser is different. Every bathroom is different. What we look to do is to take the unique riser and build that offsite rather than saying we're going to build a range of electrical risers and you pick something that suits your building because it just wouldn't work.

David: You're effectively doing offsite for yourself in that it's all your teams doing it.

Remi: Yes.

David: That has advantages.

Remi: Definitely. Going back to what we were talking about, decoupling it from the programme, improvement of productivity in terms of time, the quality. The original concept was that the electricians would come to Chelmsford, build what they were going to build, and then they would take it back to site and install it themselves. That way you've got none of the finger-pointing. It hasn't quite worked out like that because of logistic reasons. We've got people that live and work near Chelmsford, and it makes sense for them to stay at Chelmsford. One of the things I'm very conscious of is to stop that finger-pointing, the site going, "Oh, Chelmsford mucked it up," and Chelmsford going, "They didn't give me the right information."

David: Moving on to the other big changes in the industry that are coming up and the Building Safety Act is probably the major piece of legislation, and as I was reminded recently, and all the other regulation change that's coming with it, that's a huge change for everyone. Do you see that as a threat or an opportunity?

Remi: I think the industry should hang its head in shame that we've had to have this legislation hoisted upon us because basically, what it's meant is we've been caught doing it so badly that the politicians have had to step in, and actually tell us how to build things, which is terrible. We shouldn't be in that situation. It's obviously going to have a massive change. You've now got to prove your entire supply chain is competent. That sounds stupid, doesn't it? If you're buying something, a piece of kit, then you would expect the people building that bit of kit to be competent to build that bit of kit.

You should be competent that the installer, the subcontractor is competent to install it. We're in a terrible state where you can't, hand on heart, say that that bit of kit has been competently built and that the installer isn't competent to install it, or the architect isn't competent to know that it shouldn't go in that position. It's awful.

David: Are you starting to see the impact of the Building Safety Act, though, in the requirements for Gratte's on projects? Is that starting to bleed through?

Remi: We're principal contractor on a lot of our jobs now, like, 90% of our work, we're principal contractor. I think you'll see it more when you're tendering, in terms of all of the competency statements and [unintelligible 00:20:15] to prove that your supply chain and your staff are competent. You'll see, it'll be interesting, a lot of the changes are to do with building regulations and planning.

I'm not sure how the clients are going to react to it because, in theory, you should have all of the design sorted before you go to planning permission. That means that D&B doesn't work. I can't see the industry wanting to let go of D&B, so I'm not sure how they're going to square that circle.

David: Yes, I would agree on that. Most of the time, though, it's build and design rather than design and build, isn't it?

Remi: Yes. I think you've got that element to it. Then you've got the changes to Building Control because, obviously, Building Control were quite friendly previously, in that they would take a fee to help the design team, and the architect would trundle off to Building Control, show him his designs, and Building Control would go, "I don't think that's right, I don't think that's right, and I don't think that's right. You need to do this, you need to do that." Then they'd go away and rework the scheme, come back and show him again, and so forth.

You'd have this iterative process. Now Building Control aren't offering that service because they haven't got enough staff to do now what they need to do. They've said, "We're not going to do that. As professionals, you should know what you need to do to achieve Building Control sign-off. We're not going to help you." I think that'll be interesting as well.

David: You mentioned that majority of your work is now as principal contractor, presumably working directly for clients. I think you described why that's a really good-- Closer to the money as well, I guess.

Remi: Oh, yes. All day.

David: Does that bring other pressures and risks that you don't get as a Tier 2 or Tier 3?

Remi: I think you need to find the staff that can understand the principal contracting role. That was a bit of a lesson for us in that you've got some very good M&E project managers, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can build staircases and decoration, and stuff like that. Over the last four or five years, we've had to bring in a lot of what I would call CSA, so, construction, structural and architectural engineering. We've taken on a director now responsible for the CSA element, and that team that we're building. That was a step change for us, and actually taking ownership of that.

In terms of risk, as long as you're managing the process and you're not making any mistakes in that side of things, the risk is the same. If I'm main contractor and you're working as a subcontractor, if that job goes off the rails, then you're all in the lifeboats together. It's no different.

David: Yes, and design liability and responsibility gets pushed down the supply chain regardless.

Remi: Exactly, yes.

David: I get that completely. One final question I had. This is the equivalent. I'm going to take the pin out the hand grenade now, and I guess we've only got three hours left or whatever. BIM, one of your favourite topics, do you think that's been a good thing or a bad thing for the industry as a whole?

Remi: I think the concept is brilliant. The idea to digitally build something before you actually take it to site is a brilliant idea, but it doesn't work. Where I think when it was first trumpeted by government that you needed to do this and it would save 30% on projects, absolute rubbish. It costs an absolute fortune. That's because people don't put the real level of detail that they need to. As M&E contractors, because we've been drawing in 3D for a lot longer than all the other trades, and we have much more mature libraries, so you can actually get a fan coil unit and put it in the model, and you can take individual pipes to it, and everything else, but the builders don't have that same information.

They literally rely on the architects and the structural design models. That's given to the M&E contractor, and you spend an absolute fortune coordinating to it. Then they go out and procure the steelwork. That steelwork contractor comes up with a completely different idea of how he's going to put the building up. The steelwork model changes and then there's clashes everywhere and everyone looks at you and go, "You're rubbish." You go, "Well, you just changed the goalposts." You then have to re-coordinate it again. Then all of the secondary trades start coming in and windposts suddenly start appearing where there were no windposts in the structural model.

Then there's door lintels, and there's all these things that aren't in the architectural and structural models. When they do appear on-site, they clash, and so you don't solve anything. Until the rest of the industry catches up with the M&E and they really do model what they're going to install, then you'll see the benefit.

David: I think what you were describing there is what we were talking about earlier, which is build and design rather than design and build. Whilst you're starting on-site before you finish the design, BIM, how can it possibly work?

Remi: It can't. You have to have that time upfront. If you're going to build a building digitally, then you have to be given the time to build that building digitally. Also, you've got to look at the people that are doing it. The guys, the BIM operators, whilst they're super clever, IT-wise and being able to use the programme, they don't actually know how to install M&E because, otherwise, they would be engineers. Therefore, it's very difficult for them to actually get that. We try and get round that by bringing our site managers into the office to sit with our CAD operators to let the CAD operators have a go.

Then the engineers and site managers will come in and look at the model. We do model reviews and they go, "You can't do that, you can't do that, and that doesn't exist in reality." We'd have a go, but like I say when you get to site and all of these things come out of the woodwork, which aren't shown in anybody else's model, and there's clashes everywhere, you're still doing exactly what BIM set out to do, which is not have that redesign, re-coordination on-site, but it still happens.

David: I think we've discussed this before about how you have so much design time is spent on designing a building that the client can't afford or won't pay up for. It comes back to you as the contractor to make it for the buildability bit. All the stuff you've been talking about, about having people with the skills to know how to build it, the site savvy, as well as the design, is the thing that you bring to the party to make it happen, but your programme is compressed all the way through. That's another reason to take it off-site so that you take out that risk. It sounds like a strategy, really.

Remi: I think you still need that. If you want to take something like a riser and fully prefabricate that or pre-assemble it off-site, then you actually need the time in that coordination process to be able to model it completely. That needs to be built into the programme. That's where the PCSA arrangements really come into their own, where you sign up on a fee to work with the design team prior to the actual pricing of the projects. That can give you real advantages. On a traditional way, you'll literally price it, appoint it, and you're meant to be on-site in a couple of weeks time, then clearly, you can't do everything you'd like to do, pre-assemble, pre-fabricated.

There are still elements you can look at it and go, "Right, we'll do that in Chelmsford, we'll do that in Chelmsford, or we'll do that in Chelmsford," because you're literally taking a room and you're going, "That's how I would install that. Let's go and do that on a still frame in Chelmsford, and then we'll bring it to site."

David: Great. Final question. After 20 years at Gratte's, years in the building, are you now an optimist or a pessimist about the future?

Remi: I think an optimist. I think from our point of view, we've moved into the principal contracting world. We're taking on projects that we would never have taken on 10, 15 years ago in terms of build content. We've learned our lessons along the way. We seem to have quite happy clients behind us. That's reiterated with the repeat business that we keep getting asked to price and deliver. No, as I said I'm quite optimistic for GBL anyway.

David: That's great to hear. Remi Suzan, MD of Gratte Brothers, thank you very much.

Remi: Okay. Thank you. Pleasure.

[music]

David: Now for industry news, a big week, of course, with the announcement of the general election in early July. We'll be looking to talk to both parties about their growth plans, which are so important. Net Zero, which seems to have gone off the agenda for both parties at the moment. Skills and training are obviously a big area of focus for us. Finally, around payments and onerous contract clauses, and the old favourite, retentions. We are optimistic that both parties are beginning to get a better understanding of how damaging retentions are for our sector. In other news, we understand that industry accreditation or grandfather rights changes is really the number one issue on the doorstep, as politicians would say, particularly, those who have relied on grandfather rights for the validity of their skill cards. It's important to us that you have the support and resources necessary to navigate this transition effectively.

To assist you, BESA Academy's skills advisory service is available to address any enquiries you may have regarding accessing the requisite training, but there's little doubt that the deadline set by the CLC at the end of this year will not move, and therefore, it's only adaption that we could hope for. In other news, our annual conference is back on the 17th of October at the brewery in London, and it's the premier event for industry professionals. We've got visionary speakers, leading industry exhibitors, and aspiring leaders. It's a perfect place to connect with a trusted community and help shape the future of the industry.

Early bird tickets are available till the 2nd of July, so book now for your place. Also, on the same day, 17th of October, at the brewery, the BESA Industry Awards, which recognises excellence in building engineering services, you should get your entry in now. They're coming in thick and fast, get yours in before the deadline of the 12th of July. If you haven't already downloaded the Top 30 M&E Contractors Report, you can do so. It features the latest industry trends, insights, and key players, such as Gratte Brothers Limited, which we heard from earlier.

If you're watching this, then scan the QR code on your screen now, or visit thebesa.com.top30m&econtractorsreport. We also have a webinar coming up with myself and Gokhan Hassan on the 13th of June, where we'll discuss the report in greater detail. Register for your free place now. We recently launched our BESA NextGen network, which inspires and connects the next generation of building services professionals. If you'd like to join or know someone who wants to provide new innovative ideas and make a difference in our industry, visit thebesa.com/nextgen to find out more. That's the roundup of the news. Join us again for the next in this series of Behind the Built Environment podcast. Thank you, and goodbye.

David: Hello, I'm David Frise, Chief Executive of BESA, and welcome to our new podcast, Behind the Built Environment. The podcast where we will delve into the industry's latest news in the building engineering services sector. With leading industry experts, we'll explore the trends and innovation shaping the future of the built environment and the impact they will have on you and your business. Today, I'm delighted to welcome our first-ever guest, Lorna Stimpson, Chief Executive at LABC.

Lorna: Thank you.

David: Lorna's career in public service building control spans over 30 years in roles from building control surveyor up to senior managerial positions. Lorna joined LABC in 2008 as Business Development Director, advancing to Deputy Managing Director in 2015, and Chief Executive in 2019. Lorna has a proven track record in delivering complex projects and strategic reform. She works with DLUHC, HSE, the National Fire Chiefs Council, and Local Government Association as a member of the Joint Regulators Group, defining, piloting, and testing the new regulatory approaches.

She sits on the Industry Competence Committee and the Fire Protection Board. Lorna is a Board Director of LABC, the Construction Industry Council, and the Building Safety Competence Foundation. It's a wonder you've got time to come and see us today, to be honest, with all of that on a busy life.

Lorna: It's a busy time. Busy time for the construction industry generally. Yes, and I think we're all feeling the same at the moment.

David: How did you come into the industry? What was your entry point into this?

Lorna: I became a trainee building control surveyor at 16 and I've never looked back. It's the best career choice. We've just been taking on trainee building control surveyors, and I can honestly say to them that I wouldn't change a thing about my career. The 30 years in building control surveying, probably not quite 30 years, but in building control surveying was just fantastic. Fantastic. I would do it all again.

David: That's good. If you get so senior in your career and you do it all again, then you must have made the right choice.

Lorna: Yes.

David: We'd like to start off all these podcasts with a quick-fire question. Yes or no, if possible to this.

Lorna: Okay, I'll try.

David: Building Safety Act is clearly the dominant thing for you over the recent the last few years. Quite a few of these will be around Building Safety Act. Is the Building Safety Act the most important change in construction in your career?

Lorna: Absolutely. That wasn't yes, was it? I'm sorry. Yes.

David: Even more affirmatively, yes. Does it cover all buildings?

Lorna: Yes.

David: Is everyone in construction impacted?

Lorna: Yes.

David: Will the Building Safety Act result in behavioural change in the industry?

Lorna: It should. Yes.

David: Will the industry be better because of it in five years?

Lorna: Yes.

David: Do good companies, those who are competent and compliant, have anything to fear from the change?

Lorna: No.

David: Great. Thank you. All yes and nos. That was good. An absolutely. That's a huge boost. Could you just start off by just describing what you understand the Building Safety Act is about and why it's so important for the industry?

Lorna: That's a difficult question. Why is it so important and what is it about? It's about putting right the wrongs that we've had for so many years in construction, I think. It is fundamentally about cultural change. I know that is seen as quite a fluffy thing. It's not. It's not something that you can pin down, but it is about people doing the right thing for the right reasons, and consciously doing that. It's about competence. It's about culture. It's about putting safety before profit and a legislative process and framework by which that is the driving force. I truly believe that the Building Safety Act, if implemented appropriately, will do all of those things.

David: To make the building process safer, more certain, would you say, over that period of time?

Lorna: Yes.

David: To drive, we talked earlier, or you answered yes, to behavioural change. It's not just process. It's not a tickbox exercise. It requires people to change the way they operate and view the operations.

Lorna: Without a doubt. I'm obviously heavily involved in building control, and we are at the sharp end of that. Building control is becoming a regulated profession or has become a regulated profession. We're leading that change. I think the work that I do on the Industry Competence Committee as well is about driving cultural change across the whole industry. That's about attitudes. That's about people understanding what the legislation is trying to achieve, and the fact that that legislation is trying to drive safer buildings.

David: I guess with all change of that nature, you get we always divide them into threes. You get 33% immediately get it and change. 33% wait for something to happen and then change. You get 33% who never change. Where do you see us on that spectrum at the moment? I see quite a lot of the top third really going for it. Are we really getting into that second segment yet?

Lorna: In building control, we certainly are because we've had a deadline and we've had to work to it. In terms of construction, I think it will take a long time and a long time to filter down. The driver for this change was Grenfell, the Grenfell tragedy. That was what? Seven years ago now. Dare I say it, the impact fades from people's memories. If it's not something that's in your mind all of the time. It is obviously in ours because I'm working closely with the building safety regulator and DLUHC as part of this programme. We live and breathe it every day. Other people can be forgiven for not having been touched by the implementation yet.

I think the whole idea is that, gradually, over the years, this new way of working, the cultural change that we've talked about, the behaviours will start to trickle down throughout the industry. Construction is an unusual industry, and I think it will take some time. It's also a massive spanned industry, isn't it? I think we were talking earlier and you said something about from the shard to the shed. That is construction, isn't it? That is the massive breadth of construction. How long is it going to take for these new behaviours to come down to those people working on the shed?

It's going to take a long number of years, but it will happen. I'm very sure it will happen, whether it will be in my lifetime or career. I don't know, but it will happen. Or [crosstalk] determined.

David: I guess my career will end roughly the same time as yours. I would really like to have seen something happen by then. I was at an event last night at the Tower of London from the mechanical contractors, Vonterio. They held their conference in London, and their president said that they counted the number of cranes in London alone. It was over 100. They were staggered by the amount of work going on. Are you concerned about the resources available to planning and building control departments to actually deliver that, so they're not delaying the whole process?

Lorna: I don't think there will be any further delay than there ever would have been. capacity and local authority building control. Will we ever have enough people? I don't know how many is enough. I don't know, but certainly not impacting on delays to construction. The registration of building control professionals has now gone through that process, and we continue to work towards full implementation. What we're also doing within LABC, with massive support from English and Welsh governments, is to bring new recruits into building control. We know that we were an ageing profession. We know that there was a lot of people in the latter end of their career at this moment in time in building control.

We've been very, very conscious to bring in as many new starters and trainees into building control as we possibly can. We've done that over the last 12 months. We've taken on about 130 building control surveyors, and we continue to do that with government funding. Whilst we're losing people at the top end of their careers to retirement, as we would naturally, we're bringing people in at the bottom end to replace them, and to backfill those more experienced people that we're losing. It's all about the training. It's all about competence and building that professional network again, which is something that's very much part of our strategic direction.

David: The press will always focus on negative stories because that's what people want to read, by and large, you don't need to hear the good news stories. How useful is the three-month delay announced by government to building control officers complete that registration process. I'm assuming you agree with that decision to delay?

Lorna: I wrote to the building safety regulator and Welsh Government to request not a delay but an extension and that's what we've been given an extension to the deadline. Just to allow people to go through the process. I think what perhaps industry don't generally understand is it isn't just a registration process. Building control surveyors have got to prove their competence as part of that registration so through an independent company organisation. LABC's organisation that we set up some time ago the Building Safety Competence Foundation is gaining UCAS accreditation in 17-024 to be able to assess the competence of building control surveyors.

The surveyors have got to go through that really rigorous process to get their proof of competence before they're able to register. It's not a simple registration process and that three-month extension to the deadline that the BSR Welsh Government gave six months extension to the deadline. Very much welcomed by the industry and by LABC because it has given us that opportunity to get more professionals through this process. The building control professionals, they're willing they are ready and able, and going through that programme as we speak.

I think come July and in October for Wales, we will have the vast majority of current building control professionals registered in the system and practicing as registered building inspectors.

David: We represent mainly tier two contractors although they typically can now do more than half the work on a project but tier twos and below. They're very time-strapped there's I think still a lot of confusion in the industry about what's covered and how it's going to impact them. As a tier two contractor, what do you think they need to know and what should they prioritise in the way they operate in the future?

Lorna: I think it's fair to say that many people who aren't involved necessarily directly in HRBs so higher-risk buildings think that maybe the Building Safety Act doesn't impact on them. It does and the legislation has changed, and anybody who has an impact on a building whether it be a subcontractor the main contractor, they're what is now called duty holders. They have a duty to do their work in a certain way, and most of that is about competence and knowing their abilities. Whilst that might not necessarily have filtered down to your members yet, they are duty holders. That duty holder role doesn't just apply to HRBs the tall residential buildings it applies to every piece of construction.

Whether it be a kitchen extension or the shards, there are duty holders, and that duty holder isn't just the main contractor or the principal designer. The principal contractor principal designer it's everybody who has an impact on that building, or on that design. They are dutyholders, and they have responsibilities. Part of that responsibility is to understand their competence. Now, maybe at this moment in time, there isn't a requirement for them to prove that competence or be on a register. They are expected to understand their competence and their sphere of competence. The grey areas around what they are competent to work on what they have.

Competence, let's forget is about skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours, and so it's not just about what you learnt in a book. Have you worked on that type of building before? Are there things that you don't quite understand, and it's your responsibility as a duty holder to understand where your skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours lie.

David: Interestingly today, we've got a meeting in Rotherwick House which is where our offices are to discuss competence and the apprenticeship for ductwork. We've got 40 ductwork contractors coming in to do that. I guess the point I'm getting across here many of those competencies haven't really been fully defined yet. How long do you think the industry has to get that in place so that there's something to define competence against so someone who has a duty of care can understand what competence looks like?

Lorna: I think that many professional bodies, many organisations are already going down that route that you're starting to go down now. I think it's absolutely the perfect time for these disciplines, quite unique disciplines to start to understand what good looks like. I think what you're doing is what needs to happen, but that can only be done by the industries themselves. You can't tell building control what good looks like in building control if you're not from a building control profession. It's the same with your members.

It's for them to decide what good looks like and start to as you say develop the newcomers into that industry with that blueprint of what good looks like in a competent person in your industry. That can't be done to you that is for industry to do it themselves and that shows a mature industry.

David: Well, that's what we're trying to develop. We've operated competence assessment standard for 25 years, and it's only now just beginning to come into its own. That's because it's third-party accredited. Crucially also ask the question that many PQ processes done this, is that can you do the job? Which seems bizarre that we've never. We've asked, "Have they got insurance, have they got policies in place?" The question about, "Are you actually competent to do the job?" Never comes into question.

Lorna: No, and that's the difficult question, isn't it? That's where culture comes in, that's where behaviors and ethics comes in. Have you done this before? If you haven't can you find out how to do it? Are you competent to work on that scheme, so absolutely, your question is perfect. Can you do the job, not just do you want to do the job?

David: Is the price right?

Lorna: Is the price right, yes.

David: Many people have suggested that it's the end of value engineering as it currently exists, which is a euphemism for I need the price cut. Do you see that ending with the Building Safety Act really beginning to bite?

Lorna: I think it depends the extent that you're going to go with value engineering. If you're impacting on safety, then yes, it's the end of value engineering, but that should have never have been a thing. Value engineering shouldn't be to reduce something from compliance to non-compliance by using substandard materials or substandard labor that should not be a thing. It's about quality, isn't it? Value engineering no, I don't see personally, there's no reason why you can't do things just as safely or compliant or as compliant, but maybe a little bit cheaper, but not when you're compromising safety and standards. Absolutely not.

David: Many people have also questions about when it will really start. I think I use the term when will it really bite, and many people are suggesting that we need some prosecutions, and then people will go. Now we'll take some notice. How long do you think we are away from-- The industry fully understanding the consequences of the Building Safety Act.

Lorna: I think as you say until people start to be prosecuted, people don't sit up and notice. I don't think the HSE who obviously the building safety regulator is formed within the HSE. I think we all know that they don't stand off from prosecuting when they need to. If it needs to happen they will serve their notices.

David: Pre-Grenfell, I guess I'm pre the Building Safety Act. There was always I felt the perception in the industry that if building control didn't spot something or Clarkworks, for example, then we've got away with it. Actually, the building I live in that was the response of the developer that well, building control signed it off. There was always the perception that building control was somehow fully responsible for things and not able to do things properly. How is the industry responded to that?

Lorna: That was absolutely the perception before. It was never a fact. It was always the responsibility of the person carrying out the work to comply with the legislation. Building Control are there to secure compliance, if they see non-compliance, to do something about that. Things haven't changed, but now what has changed across the industry is that there will be an expectation for that principal contractor to say that they have complied with the legislation. That is their application for completion. Entirely changed, turned on its head.

The perception was wrong before, but what the legislation has done is made it clearer that it is the duty holder's responsibility to comply. Just because Building Control didn't happen to pop onto site when they were doing something inappropriate doesn't mean to say that they could continue to do something inappropriate. Again, it comes back to culture and behaviours. Why is that okay? Just one, we've been interviewing recently, and I have said this before, but we were interviewing recently for trainee Building Control surveyor. One of the questions was about integrity. What does integrity mean? Obviously, that question is because for Building Control or anybody in our industry, you've got to have integrity.

One young person, their answer to me was integrity is doing the right thing even when no one's watching. That was absolutely perfect. I think if the whole of the construction industry used that or just kept that in the back of their mind, then we would have a safer construction industry, we would have a safer built environment. Integrity and ethics is the thing for me.

David: Would you advise our members to have evidence, a full bank of evidence of how they have complied with the package of work they've done at the time?

Lorna: This isn't meant to be something that is difficult or hard to do or an imposition. This is just proving that you've done what you should do. In the same way, with Building Control surveyors now having to prove competence and register with the regulator, that's not about doing something different than they've done before. Dame Judith, in her report, was really clear. She wanted proven, measured competence, not just I say, "I'm competent or I passed an exam 30 years ago and therefore," this is not anymore. The construction industry is not, pass an exam once, practice for life.

I think that that's got to be the same for every part of our industry. You've got to keep up to date. We know that construction products alone change so often. It's such a massively innovative, area that how can you stand still? That constantly keeping yourself up-to-date is part of being a built environment professional and so very important.

David: Lorna, just to summarise what we've heard today to make sure that I've fully grasped this. The Building Safety Act is the key legislative change over the last few years. It affects the whole industry. I think we said the shard to a shed, everything and everybody. It requires cultural change, ethical behaviours on a scale that we haven't seen before and people need to do the right thing. I think we say even when people aren't watching you, it's for the industry to decide competence, what competence is, and indeed, I guess, what compliance is from that.

That tier two contractors or our members should always evidence their compliance, have a record of it for the future. It's your responsibility to provide that evidence. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Certainly, not building control.

Lorna: No.

David: I think we've reached the end of our time. I've got one final question and that is really, do you leave or are you currently optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the industry?

Lorna: Optimistic, but that's because it's Thursday. If it was Monday, maybe not. No, I'm definitely optimistic because I can only see good things. It's been difficult. There have been some hard decisions. There will be hard times coming for the whole industry. We've got to be better as an industry. We've got to be better. I think that we will be.

David: Lorna Stimson, Chief Executive at LABC. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

Lorna: Thank you

David: Now to industry news. This is the week that T. Clark were acquired by Regent Acquisitions for £90.56 million, taking them from a public company back into private ownership. Interesting comparison with the failure of MJ Lonsdale recently. There's still plenty of flux in the market and some consolidation, no doubt, to come. Having just interviewed Lorna Stimpson from LABC, it's interesting to note as well that the Grenfell inquiry has been further delayed, and we will see when that finally gets published, and the impact that has.

In BESA news, BESA are very proud to be the competition partner for refrigeration and air conditioning, along with Mitsubishi and Refcom. The national finals will be held in November, with the WorldSkills finals being held in Shanghai, China. BESA have also launched TR19 Air, along with complementary courses from our approved suppliers. That is an opportunity to evidence your competence and compliance, as we discussed earlier in the podcast. In Scotland, new build heat standards have been introduced, which came into force on the 1st of April.

Finally, I had a letter published in the Financial Times, which you've no doubt all read, about boiler pricing strategies and the consequences of government consistently changing policy at the last minute. A quick reminder that we operate, as BESA, the competence assessment standard, a three-part standard business management review, a technical audit, and organisational capability. Which is UCAS accredited, which is your opportunity to evidence to those duty care holders your competence and compliance. Crucially, we ask the question that many PQ processes don't, is can you do the job? On that note, thank you and goodbye.