The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has recently unveiled its inaugural three-year strategic plan, marking a significant milestone in its mission to instigate positive cultural change within the building safety landscape in England. The strategy outlines a clear direction for the BSR, with a focus on enhancing safety, standards and trust across the entire built environment.
The plan’s core objectives include improving safety and standards for all buildings, ensuring the safety and confidence of residents in higher-risk buildings, and rebuilding trust in the built environment sector. To achieve these goals, the BSR will focus on delivering consistent standards in the building control profession, overseeing improvements across the built environment, and regulating the planning, design and construction of new higher-risk buildings.
Endorsed by key figures like Secretary of State Michael Gove and HSE’s Director of Building Safety, Philip White, the plan emphasises transparency, accountability, proportionality and consistency in regulatory activities. Over the next three years, the BSR aims to collaborate across sectors, bringing about fundamental changes in the safety and standards of all buildings.
Chair of the Health and Safety Executive, Sarah Newton, stresses collaboration and collective responsibility as essential elements for delivering better standards. The BSR’s Strategic Plan for 2023-2026, accessible to the public, reflects its commitment to transparency and accountability.
Under the Building Safety Act, the BSR will oversee building control bodies, ensuring consistency and elevating standards. The Health and Safety Executive’s strategic context will guide BSR’s oversight, emphasising roles, responsibilities, risk-based approaches and links to codes of conduct.
Monitoring, assurance, and enforcement will be carried out through a risk-based and intelligence-led approach. BSR will implement escalating sanctions and enforcement measures to maintain standards and address poor performance.
In conclusion, the Building Safety Regulator’s strategic plan is a pivotal moment in pursuing a safer and more accountable built environment in England. By driving positive change and collaboration, the BSR aims to reshape the industry, ensuring the highest standards of safety and competence for years to come.
We ask two experts to recommend technologies available to assist building control professionals in meeting these standards.
Nigel Morrey, Technical Director at Siniat
Digitisation has played a critical role in improving efficiencies, enhancing productivity and modernising businesses across sectors – and construction is no different. However, digital uptake amongst construction firms has, historically, been slow.
In recent years, this has begun to change. Larger numbers of firms have been adopting digital methods of manufacturing for, designing, and constructing buildings, thanks to the speed, agility, accuracy and sustainability benefits it can offer.
However, with the Building Safety Act (BSA) having come into force, it is critical that we utilise digital technology to increase building safety, too.
A crucial component of the BSA has been the introduction of the ‘Golden Thread’ of information. This is defined as a secure and digitally accessible record of data that contains all information that may be required to keep both the building and its occupants safe, both now and in the future. With a complex supply chain and numerous parties requiring input, the only way that we’ll achieve this is to increase the adoption of digital tools.
Digital platforms are not new to the industry and in line with the enhanced requirement for high-quality product information, usage of this type of system has already increased. For example, NBS developed its innovative cloud-based specification system, NBS Chorus, back in 2018 which has been widely adopted by designers across the industry.
However, the provision of data is not a requirement for one specific profession – or person – it is critical that every party, on every project, provides the data required to ensure that a building remains safe. This means that it isn’t just architects and specifiers who should be championing such tools – manufacturers, suppliers, subcontractors, developers and main contractors should also be utilising cloud-based, real-time, systems to ensure the provision of accurate and up-to-date performance data.
This data is critical for every element of a building but drylining requires additional attention. This is because drylining makes up a large percentage of a building’s passive fire protection, and, while we are all familiar with fire doors and fire glass, there is rarely mention of any such thing as a ‘fire wall’. However, to ensure our buildings are truly safe, it is critical that the fire performance of walls and finishings is also scrutinised and certified robust.
At Siniat, we know that adequate performance data and extensive testing of drylining systems is fundamental in ensuring safer construction. Therefore, to support our partners in meeting the requirements of the Building Safety Act, we recently launched our own digital platform, MySiniat. The platform grants our partners real time access to CAD files, fire classification reports, acoustic reports and datasheets to enable a smooth specification process while ensuring the provision of a ‘Golden Thread’ of information that can be accessed for any project, from anywhere, at any time.
We’ve invested in this tool because it is our belief that, as an industry, we should be worried about building safety. After all, it is a huge responsibility that cannot be taken lightly.
However, we should all feel confident about ensuring it, too.
By sharing knowledge and enhancing our provision of quality data, we can begin to shift perspectives and view the new regulations not as a threat, but as an opportunity to do better.
Find out more about MySiniat here.
Maria Hudson, CMO, Zutec
A massive task lies ahead. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has published its first strategic plan, defining a three-year ‘roadmap’ for assessing higher-risk residential buildings, but it remains a huge challenge to train a new generation of building inspectors. They, in turn, will need to rely on the goodwill, experience, and expertise of the entire supply chain, from planning to handover so they can quickly get up to speed.
Contractors and asset owners achieving best-in-class information management will be a crucial step towards achieving this. They have the power to directly support building control professionals in meeting the competence framework introduced by the new BSR led by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Crucially, the new requirement to have all accurate and complete building information correctly stored in one place will, importantly, streamline inspection processes as much as it will improve project transparency.
This will not only take the pain away from the inspector having to manually find and evaluate information for building control purposes, but also improve the accuracy of the data. Fundamentally, it will make it easier to spot and close information gaps, reducing the risk of non-compliance and benefiting everyone.
Digital technology does, and will, play a vital supporting role here, with powerful Common Data Environment (CDE) platforms, such as Zutec. Asset owners, developers, contractors, and building operators alike, will all need a simple platform where they can easily store, manage and then share information with inspectors and the regulator when required.
While the advantages are well communicated to the direct users of these systems, they can also help building control professionals do a better, more thorough job. For example, CDEs significantly increase reporting efficiency, as all the data it hosts automatically exists in one place. Going further, information can even be templated within the CDE to meet BSR requirements with repetitive tasks automated and standardised, removing another layer of administration and freeing inspectors to deliver higher-value tasks.
A solution like this helps contractors and asset owners de-risk their developments and property portfolios whilst providing building control professionals with the information they need, when they need it, better equipping them to satisfy BSR criteria.
The deadline for when the Building Safety Act comes into full effect on 1 April 2024, is fast approaching. To ensure its full weight is enforced, we will need to have a robust inspection regime, underpinned by competent professionals. With only two months to go, we all need to double down our collective efforts to deliver this outcome.
From our perspective, as a digital solution provider, understanding that the building control community is a pivotal stakeholder towards the success of the BSA’s aims, will be essential. As an industry, we need to work with them at every level, from trainees to seasoned inspectors, getting them familiar with processes and systems, and educating them on their purpose, to achieve a safer and more accountable construction sector.