The Building Safety Act: Embracing change and delivering a safer built environment

We all remember the tragedy of Grenfell. A preventable disaster in which 74 people lost their lives in the place they should’ve been safest: their homes.

The inquiry that followed had to ensure one thing above all else, something of this nature could never happen again. This was the impetus for the Building Safety Act (BSA).

Grenfell was a result of a number of inadequacies in the design and supply chain of the building. This was a symptom of a wider dilution of responsibility for everyone involved in the project. The BSA acts to ensure everyone is aware of their responsibilities and lives up to them, removing doubt and guaranteeing the safety of the buildings we deliver.

In this short article, we’re going to look at the act, the new responsibilities that fall to us all and how it will affect the design process.

The responsibility that falls to all built environment professionals

Anyone involved with the design and build of structures bears a large responsibility to ensure that designs are robust and well-considered from the earliest stages. One of the big takeaways from the BSA is the adoption of an approach where issues are caught early, every member of the project team bears responsibility for the end product and a mandatory framework is in place that enforces adherence to rules and regulations.

Essentially, this approach can be boiled down to a number of key elements

Early engagement and detailed planning

This is about thinking through all aspects of the project early on including potential challenges, constraints, and overall feasibility of the designs. What’s more, engaging with the supply chain and stakeholders early for their input ensures that the design is realistic and practical.

This approach means we can avoid the need for last-minute changes that disrupt the construction process.

Enforcement through the mandatory framework

The BSA provides a mandatory framework that enforces this proactive approach. Ultimately, it holds designers accountable for their work and requires them to stringently comply with safety regulations and standards. The end goal that must be achieved is a building that is safe and structurally sound.

Collaboration and communication

Beyond its technical requirements, the BSA represents a cultural shift in the industry.

Putting aside old cliches around the competitive nature of construction, a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration brings with it a suite of benefits over and above the obvious health and safety benefits. These benefits include more buildable structures, less material waste and more astute designs.

By requiring comprehensive coordination at earlier stages, it fosters greater collaboration among designers and contractors. This isn’t just about safety, it’s about adopting principles of good design. The BSA gives us the tools to push for better practices across the board.

At Renaissance, this ethos is already ingrained in our processes. Our longstanding commitment to early engagement and rigorous documentation ensures that we meet the BSA’s standards without significant changes to our workflows. However, the act provides additional leverage to advocate for full buy-in from all stakeholders, ensuring a smoother, safer design process.

Detailed documentation

The BSA requires designers to produce comprehensive design packages that clearly outline all the necessary details and specifications needed for the build. These documents can be thought of as a clear and stringent set of instructions for contractors, reducing ambiguity, creating a clear paper trail and setting up a chain of responsibility.

These documents form a very important aspect of the BSA, opening the door for a much higher level of regulatory oversight of projects. This is because the design packages will need to be reviewed and approved by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) before construction can proceed. This step ensures that all safety and design aspects have been thoroughly vetted by independent arbiters.

Ethical and professional responsibility

As designers, we have to be prepared to stand by our work and must be able to demonstrate that we’ve adhered to the highest standard of the profession. This is about taking all the necessary steps to ensure the buildings we deliver are safe for those who will inhabit them.

This is something that underlies the BSA. Ultimately, with or without the BSA, we should take our ethical responsibilities seriously. That means prioritising safety, quality and thoroughness over cost-cutting and profit. This responsibility alone will be enough for many companies working in the industry. For those who are less conscientious, the BSA takes this responsibility and makes it a legal requirement.

Achieving coordination by RIBA Stage 4

One of the most significant shifts introduced by the Building Safety Act is the increased onus on design teams to achieve complete and accurate coordination by the end of RIBA Stage 4. Historically, it was common for design teams to rely on Stage 5 to address outstanding details and incorporate input from specialist subcontractors. However, the BSA now mandates that all design elements must be fully resolved before submission to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).

Ideally, Stage 5 drawings should require minimal further input from the design team, allowing the contractor to progress with construction directly from those documents. The mandating of this in the BSA can only be a positive for project timelines. It will completely do away with caveats or placeholders in RIBA Stage 4 information such as ‘TBC’.

Some changes to be aware of…

If you’re a conscientious professional already doing what’s required to ensure projects are delivered to scope safely and without negligent shortcuts, the changes required to conform to standards won’t be a radical upheaval to your current practices. That being said, there will be some changes that it’s important to be aware of.

Managing client expectations

In the past, clients might have expected flexibility when it comes to making design changes on the fly. However, this is exactly the kind of thing the BSA seeks to cut out. Ultimately, we need to take a disciplined approach, doing the hard work required at the design stage and vastly reducing the need for later pivots and changes. This is particularly relevant because all design changes will need to be approved by the BSR, adding the potential to dramatically delay and destabilise projects.

These are elements you’ll need to make your client aware of in order to manage their expectations.

Potential delays from the BSR

While it’s most definitely early days, there’s discussion afoot about the BSR and the approval process for design documents. By law, it’s stated that a council must give a decision on an application within five weeks of receiving it, although it’s estimated that decisions will typically be given much more promptly than this.

Nonetheless, this lag time is something that will need to be considered from the outset when designing a building. As already mentioned, the approval time will also make changes to designs much more costly as they will need to be reapproved by the regulator before work can commence on them.

Time to embrace change for a safer and better future

Here at renaissance, we’re welcoming the BSA with open arms. We already have stringent documentation policies in place through our ISO accreditations and agree that clearer responsibilities and oversight to ensure compliance is a good thing.

Tragedies like Grenfell cannot be allowed to happen again. To ensure that, the industry has to take responsibility and commit to working the right way. While there might be bumps in the road as the BSA takes root, as there is with all things that substantively change the way we work, it is a piece of legislation that will help protect people and increase the quality of our built environment.

And that can only be a positive.

This article was written by Senior Engineer, Phillip Whitesmith