4site’s Insights from the 2020 RICS Fire Safety Conference

Dame Judith Hackitt’s opening remarks on Building Safety Reform

At the end of 2020, we attended the virtual RICS Fire Safety Conference. The Conference itself was packed full of insightful updates, with a clear focus on building safety reform. The short introduction to the conference alone, presented by Dame Judith Hackitt, was full of information on the progress of The Building Safety Bill, the role of the Building Safety Regulator, and the forthcoming definitions of competence.

Dame Judith Hackitt opened her introduction with thepowerful statement “any doubts that anyone might have had that we areactually going to see a massive change in the building regulatory system havenow been put to bed.”

She continued to discuss the upcoming changes of building safety reform, following the Grenfell Tower Tragedy of 2017, and began by discussing the all-important role of the Building Safety Regulator…

The Building Safety Regulator

Last year it was announced that this role would form part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and, speaking with assured authority, in her position of personally chairing the Transition board, Dame Judith provided further clarity that this will form a “separate division” and will be “properly resourced”.  

This affirms previous statements on the matter that the Building Safety Regulator will ‘have teeth’ in its enforcement ability, and those in control of buildings in scope/high-risk high-rise residential buildings that haven't yet taken action should perhaps see this as somewhat of a warning shot!

The Building Safety Bill

July 2020 saw the introduction of the first draft of the Building Safety Bill; which is set to change the way in which building safety is managed, particularly in relation to high-risk high-rise buildings. Dame Judith revealed that some have shown signs of complacency because the legislation is “unlikely to be in place until 2023”, however, she reaffirmed that “action is actually going to happen” and that this is now “valuable time” to be planning, strategising and preparing so that we are all ready for the day that the bill becomes law.

She went on to explain that a lot of what is to come has been defined and “clearly laid out” so there is no reasonable excuse as to why Property Managers and Building Owners should not be adequately prepared for day one of the new regime.

You can find out more about the forthcoming requirements and how you might prepare for them by getting in touch with our team.

Industry Safety Steering Group

One of the other things that Dame Judith spoke about was theIndustry Safety Steering Group, this group wascreated “to drive culture change within industry” and is chaired by Dame Judithherself.

The group published its second annual report last year,which reported on the good amount of progress so far.

She said that “there are companies and organisations outthere who are already identifying themselves as early adopters and movingthings forward”, however, there are still “a lot of organisations who aretaking that approach of ‘we’ll wait to be told’ or ‘we’ll wait andsee what the detail is before we move’ so we do need to keep driving thisforward.”

4site considers itself an early adopter, and is developing araft of new technology, skills and services to support our clients through thistransition and beyond.          

Issue of Competence

One of the key issues highlighted in the Hackitt Review wascompetency. At the RICS Conference, Dame Judith identified competency as anissue “needing to be addressed across the whole sector… to ensure that people understand,not only what they need to do, but the role that they play as part of a biggersystem…”

She continued to say:

 “We were veryclear, and have been all along, that one of the things that we need in thatcompetence area is to be assured of the qualifications that people have.

That isn’t to say that currently we don’t trust anyqualifications but there are a whole variety and when you look at other partsof the sector there are many, many different awarding bodies so it does becomequite complex, quite quickly.

So, one of the things that has really become quiteimportant in all of this is to ensure that we get third-party accreditation ofthe new qualifications that people will receive in building safety.”

Though not everyone will need to demonstrate competence to a single unified level, it does mean that those who “work on regulatory system surrounding high-rise complex buildings… in whatever part of the profession… will need to have and be able to show this additional qualification over and above those that are common to the whole of the sector or the discipline”.

This is in relation to competence for a buildings initialdesign, through to its construction, occupation and ongoing managementthroughout its lifecycle.

Key Message

Dame Judith finished her talk by insisting that “we are onthe path to delivering what is a once in a generation change” but a massiveamount of work still needs to be done.

As always, residents are at the heart of the new regime andone of the key messages from this talk was to “remember why we’re doing this.”

Another key message was that although the law won’t come in until 2023, we should start the prepare for the Building Safety Bill now. Especially as “you will see a gradual step up in the activity of the building safety regulator and that will become really visible for the first time...early in 2021…”