EPISODE: 039 - BUILDING SAFETY ACT

BYTNAR - TALKS

EPISODE: 039 - BUILDING SAFETY ACT

This episode is for people who want to know more about the Building Safety Act.

You should like this episode if you ask yourself questions like:

• What is the Building Safety Act 2022 and how does it affect the construction industry?

• How does the "golden thread" digital record impact building safety compliance?

• What are the new high-risk building (HRB) criteria under the Building Safety Act?

• What are the Building Safety Act gateways, and what do they mean for construction projects?

• How does the Building Safety Regulator ensure compliance with the new safety standards?

• What protections does the Building Safety Act offer for leaseholders against cladding costs?

• What changes have been made to accountability for developers and contractors in the UK construction industry?

• Why is competence now a critical requirement for construction professionals under the Building Safety Act?

• How does the Building Safety Act address fire safety and structural integrity for high-risk buildings?

LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT

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This is Bytnar Talks: The Engineer Takes on Construction, Episode 39.

Hi, I'm Piotr Bytnar. Each day, I help my clients plan and design building projects through Bytnar Limited, a consulting Chartered Structural Engineers practice.

My biggest passion—and the cornerstone on which I've built my business—is finding clever solutions for construction projects. I am a Chartered Structural Engineer and a budding software developer, so you can rest assured that I will strive to talk about the best practices and the use of new technologies in the industry.

If you're embarking on a construction project, or are involved in planning, designing, and building the world around us, you'll find this podcast useful.

Building Safety Act

Hi guys, and welcome to Bytnar Talks, your favorite podcast on all matters of architecture, engineering, and construction.

It is Thursday, the 12th of December 2024, and I'm here back with you with the 39th episode and information on the Building Safety Act.

Can you feel it in the air? The warm smell of turkey, tofu, carp, or whatever else you stuff yourself with during Christmas? I certainly can!

This is the 39th episode of the podcast. I cannot believe that it was nearly a year ago when I decided: This is it. I will not get better at talking about the things that matter most to me—and I won’t be able to reach more people with content that will hopefully help them understand the increasingly complicated world of construction—without actually doing it.

So, I went and started.

The intro to this episode is still the original, very echoey recording. I did that in a very small room with nearly no furniture—so all of that reverberation comes from that.

Recording at the side of everyday life and operating a business isn’t for the faint-hearted, but it is a brilliant way to make your thoughts more organized and to think about topics in a more detailed way. The act of formulating a thought that will hopefully reverberate with the audience is a great personal improvement tool—and this is how I see it.

It definitely became easier during this year to deliver these episodes for you, but—but—there is still a long way to go to make it a format more palatable and easier to digest. Bear with me, though—I'm not stopping yet! Incremental improvement is the name of the game, and I hope you'll see this happening in the coming year.

I still have one more episode planned for this year, to close it on an even number of 40—so the year does not end for me just yet. I will record the last episode in the same echoey place I recorded the first, to give it a nice closure.

But right now, let's get to the matters at hand—and it is a big one: the Building Safety Act.

So without further ado, let's dive straight into this.

The Building Safety Act is a foundation-shaking change in the construction and asset management industry.

I think I'll start strong with a question we’ll hopefully have an answer to by the end of this episode. The question is:

Has the industry finally agreed that there are no winners in racing to the bottom, and are the days of risk-dumping over?

Or is the Act just another toothless consultant-coffers-enriching piece of legislation?

Interesting question, isn’t it? And hopefully, this episode will answer it for you—or maybe bring up some more questions about it.

This episode will give you a broad-brush, no-BS overview of the current state of affairs within the industry—reminding you about the main changes that came into full force this year—closing with a crystal-ball look at what to expect in the future.

So let’s have a look into the nitty-gritty of this proposal.

If you are in the construction industry, you will most likely share the feeling of change. But when you look at the industry from the outside, you will see organizations trying to make sense of the new requirements to remain in the game—or trying to pretend competence in order to gain a competitive advantage.

The fact of the matter is: neither the legislature and the bodies it created, nor the industry itself or its participants, have done this before. So we are all going through the hurdles of a steep learning curve. And as much as we may dislike the process—and the waste it generates—there is no turning back.

I think everyone knows the reason behind the Act, but let’s just do a little rewind here.

For the past 40 years—since the introduction of the Building Act 1984—things started to look a little bit different in the world of construction in Britain. We changed from a world of prescribed ways of doing things to a sudden shift in culture: to consultants making sense of the Building Regulations 1985.

Ever since a state of confusion and opportunism prevailed through the PIGs down Snodland and Woodlands throughout the country.

The market was all of a sudden basically open—open for anyone to deliver construction projects, with the caveat of meeting the Approved Documents, which by definition were just an interpretation of the Building Regulations—and actually, they still just are.

They are not binding, but they are the only way the Building Control Officers—or, as they are called now, the Building Control Approvers in England—can justify their actions.

So grew a culture of lack of project definition, as a project could go through the legislative process with a minimum of information, and with work being made up as the building was constructed.

This unfortunately culminated in the tragic events of the night of 14th June 2017, when 53 adults and 19 children lost their lives due to the incompetence, greed, and complacency of the people involved in the design, specification, approval, and construction of the envelope improvement works.

The tragic events that engulfed Grenfell Tower were a trigger for change—and that change came in the new legislation called the Building Safety Act 2022.

The Building Safety Act has an overarching and overreaching impact on the existing legislation. I will attempt to give you the biggest changes. If I miss anything here, please do not hold it against me—but let me know what else you’d like me to include. Maybe I can concentrate more on it in future episodes or address it in a post on LinkedIn.

Starting with the big guns here—the influence on primary legislation, which includes:

• Building Act 1984 (now amended)

• Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974

• Defective Premises Act 1972

• Housing Act 2004

• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985

That’s for the primary legislation.

The secondary legislation was impacted also. We have new additions to:

• Building Regulations 2010

• Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022

• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005

It’s worth also mentioning that there were some changes in the leaseholder reform legislation, where leaseholders were often left holding the bag when it came to paying for cladding removal and other safety fixes.

The Building Safety Act now brought in measures to cap their liabilities and make developers and owners shoulder more of that cost.

There are also changes to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, where Gateway One was introduced.

Now, these legislative changes brought with them some significant shifts:

• There are stricter accountability criteria for the design, construction, and operation of buildings.

• Developers, contractors, and landlords face increased liability, with longer limitation periods for claims against them: up to 30 years retrospectively for projects begun or completed before the Act came into force, and 15 years for new builds.

There are financial burdens related to remediation, which are now being shifted away from leaseholders, as I just mentioned.

Safety standards have improved, with the addition of:

• The Building Safety Regulator

• Classification of Building Control Approvers

We see enhanced regulations for fire safety and structural integrity, particularly for higher-risk and multi-occupancy buildings.

The idea of this new oversight mechanism is to prevent strategies similar to Grenfell.

We now have an empowered regulatory framework that establishes mechanisms to penalize non-compliance more effectively—things like lapsing of building approvals if work is not initiated within specified timelines.

Leaseholder protections now cap the liability to £10,000 generally, and £15,000 in London, with repayment periods stretched over a 10-year period for costs related to building safety measures—shielding leaseholders from disproportionate financial impacts.

We are now also forced to be digitally compliant—to have digitally compliant records about what we do. That’s mandated in the Golden Thread, which requires us to maintain digital records for building safety, design, construction details, and further operation of the building.

The Act creates new roles. These include:

• The Building Safety Regulator, who is tasked with enforcing new building safety requirements, overseeing the safety of high-risk buildings, and providing guidance to duty holders.

• New individual duty holders and accountable persons, who need to deal with the assigned responsibility for ensuring compliance with fire and structural safety during design, construction and occupation phases of the building. These include roles like building managers or owners, who must engage proactively with safety requirements.

Resident engagement is now mandatory. New roles are created for engaging residents in the safety management process. This way, we can foster transparency about safety risks and the measures taken—between the owners or asset operators and the actual building users.

There are new requirements to think about, especially when the building is an HRB—a higher-risk building. These attract additional requirements.

There are provisions for mandatory safety certificates, with regular safety certifications for high-risk buildings to ensure ongoing compliance with updated safety standards, and for updating safety records for any changes that the building undergoes throughout its lifetime.

There are remediation obligations—legal requirements for responsible parties to fund and complete remediation of unsafe cladding or other defects.

Building approvals and planning are more detailed now. There are stricter controls on building approvals, ensuring that all new developments meet safety requirements before construction begins.

There’s also a big push into digital information management. The introduction of the Golden Thread requires a comprehensive and accessible digital record of building safety information throughout its lifetime.

I repeat it again because it permeates the whole idea of what the Act brings: The Building Safety Act applies to all buildings that fall under the primary legislation considerations.

But what is a higher-risk building, where those considerations are enhanced?

When we think about HRBs—higher-risk buildings—we're generally talking about:

• Buildings with seven or more storeys, or

• 18 metres or more in height, measured from the ground to the finished floor level,

• With at least two residential units.

When we talk about residential units, we mean flats or living units, but not those used for institutional or business purposes—like hospitals, hotels, or military barracks.

Although they could be considered as living accommodations, they aren’t included here. Alas, maybe in future legislative changes, they will be—if there are at least two separate residential units. So mixed-use buildings do fall under this consideration.

The Golden Thread, simply put, is a digital record of the building from cradle to grave.

There is now a big race to make this digitally feasible, and it shows points of contention—but we are on the right track I believe.

It will take some years before we have a good, reliable workflow in place—and something similar and unified across all the stages of design, build, and then asset management.

But I think we’ll get there eventually.

The biggest problem is the difference in the requirements and needs for information at different stages of the building’s creation and operation.

You know—you need different information for design,Different again for construction (it may vary as-built),And then again it may vary once the building is in use and undergoing changes or maintenance.

Now, Gateways have been introduced to control the process a little more—for the higher-risk buildings.

And, simply put, these are checkpoints to ensure that a building is well thought through—from the concept stage down to completion.

Let’s go through them:

Gateway One

This is basically the impact I mentioned earlier—at the planning stage of the process. It is about concept and safety strategy.

It’s not mandated within the Act itself, but it is required that a high-risk building is thought about holistically, especially from the perspective of fire safety, even before planning is granted.

So you see—we now approach building fire safety from the word go, rather than trying to address it later on.

Gateway Two

This is the stage we would normally consider as full plans approval.

Here, the building design needs to be holistically, approved, and it must be shown that appropriate provisions for quality assurance are in place before works can commence.

Gateway Three

This is the last stage—where we need to prove compliance of the as-built building.

Its digital record must be approved before the building can be registered with the Building Safety Regulator.

And that registration is required prior to occupation of the building.

Now, it’s a very important thing—and it’s being talked and discussed right, left, and center—and that is competence.

It hasn’t yet been defined 100% in law. There are some directions given by institutions and standard documentation, but until it is fully embedded in legislation, it’s still not that meaningful.

But anyway—competence is simply the requirement for those appointed to work on a higher-risk project to have the relevant skill, knowledge, experience, and behaviors necessary to undertake the role.

Now, this statement—you can see it almost everywhere. And most of the good designers will have skill, knowledge, and behaviors. But experience?

Well, we've seen—by where the actual industry is—we can tell that whatever experience we’ve accumulated to this point is worth nothing. It’s basically bad experience. It’s the experience of pushing, of trying to deliver buildings not holistically, not safely, in most cases.

So experience is a tricky one here. I’d say—you can gain the experience if you have enough skill and the right behavior, the right culture, and the right approach to the matter at hand.

You see—most buildings are pretty much the same… but different. And trying to think that every single one is something completely different? I don’t think that’s a healthy approach.

The industry has shown—currently, no one really has the experience. But that can be carefully gained if the right skills, knowledge, and behaviors are in place.

There are PAS 8671 documents issued to give guidance in this regard, and the competence requirement applies to:

• Duty holders

• Principal designers

• Principal contractors

• Designers

• Contractors

• Building control professionals

• Persons responsible for buildings in occupation

Interestingly, we are also directed further to the BS 8670 standard, where we can get more detailed guidance.

Unfortunately, the standard costs £430—so for small designers, it may not be the most appealing prospect. So much for the dissemination of knowledge in the spirit of increased safety, right?

Well—someone needs to make money on it, don’t they? And we know who that is.

Anyway—we drive the profession as professionals. And we need to uphold those standards. In short: we need to know the legislation, how to apply it, and how to control the design, construction, and asset management processes.

If we’re competent in doing it, we know what we’re doing. We know what we don’t know. But then we can research and gain that experience during any type of project—and then we are on the safe side.

On the other hand, if we’re ignorant about all of this and just trying to push information through—well, then it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Perhaps that’s why most of the BSR applications are rejected or delayed—quite severely in some cases.

All that said—all that change is good.

But what can we expect next?

What do you think?

There is still a period of ongoing concern surrounding the actual execution of the Golden Thread, and the competence of all parties involved to coordinate and maintain the information.

As I just mentioned—it’s all about the skill, knowledge, and behavioral approach.

Experience? I think it should be taken out of the equation. We already have a lot of people with bad experience—and that’s proven. That’s how we ended up with Grenfell Tower. So let’s just take that one out.

Institutions, businesses, and lawyers have all gotten used to—over the past 40 years—the idea that you can keep on pushing information through the system and it will eventually go through.

And it seems to be the same approach all over again. Not through everyone, but most try this approach. And yeah—we have quite big delays right now. Not to mention the lack of great communication between the Building Safety Regulator and the actual industry. That’s quite complicated too.

Not everyone knows where to look for the information. It’s not well communicated.

But—we’re getting there. And eventually, it will be a breeze. It’ll be something that we just do on a daily basis.

So, going back to the execution of the Golden Thread, and the competence of all parties involved in the coordination and maintenance of the information—that’s the important part here: information.

We need to unify it.

Obviously, we’ve got our CORBEs, BIM standards, housing standards—and all of them may be a little tricky to integrate together. But there is a great push to achieve this through technology.

And it does look a little bit like the world of Structural Engineering—when we moved into computer-assisted and software-assisted design processes. We managed to let a graduate do the work with the aid of software, but always with oversight from a senior engineer.

But can we really rely on such oversight in other areas?

Can we trust that those using software to demonstrate compliance with the Golden Thread will actually produce compliant designs?

That’s a little bit doubtful, isn’t it?

We’ve learned from the past—the free market pushes for the best return. So the appearance of competence—gained through software, with no oversight—may well lead to another tragedy.

On the other hand, there are voices calling for the licensing of:

• Builders

• Designers

• Project Managers

Is this a viable solution?

Perhaps it is—if aided by digital records. Such licensed individuals could validate the truth of records provided by less competent individuals.

But if that won’t be the case—we’ll be building a lot less. Because licensing will remove many players from the game—just as it did with Approved Building Inspectors.

I am hopeful for tomorrow.

For me, this legislation gives arguments I can use whenever I am dealing with new clients. Because previously, those kinds of arguments were falling on flat ears.

So this is it, folks—the Building Safety Act, in its full glory.

What do you think?

Has it been a great disruptor where you work?Have you changed your approach yet, or are you still pretending nothing is going on around you?

Whatever your approach—the changes are here to stay, and I trust this is the final push we needed for the digitization of the architecture, engineering, construction, and asset management industry.

I’ll now spend some time digesting the seven volumes of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, to bring you the lessons learned, pointers, and thoughts to digest before the year closes—and fireworks signal the end of an amazing year.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email—I'm more than happy to help you out.

At Bytnar, we deal with planning, designing, and managing your projects—and we are always glad to facilitate a free initial consultation to steer you in the right direction.

Visit www.bytnar.co.uk and reach out to us—whether your question is, “Can you help me with my project?” or “What should I do?”—we will be able to give you a piece of no-obligation advice.

At Bytnar, we help our clients design and execute their dream homes or investment projects. And if your building is falling apart, we can help investigate the reasons behind it and provide you with an appropriate strategy, design, and specification for repair.

Thank you again for listening. Please voice your opinions—I’m waiting for you on LinkedIn, and I want to hear from you.

See you next week.

Bytnar Designs the World Around You.

Toodloo! 👋

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Piotr Bytnar BEng (Hons) MSc CEng MIStructE

Chartered Structural Engineer who deals with the Architecture of buildings. His Master's Studies led him to an in-depth understanding of risk and contract arrangements in construction as well as specialist knowledge in soil mechanics.

He and his team help homeowners and property developers to design and deliver construction projects reducing waste in time and the cost. He believes that the construction project is an iterative process that can be well managed and it is best managed if all the aspects of the project definition and management are dealt with in-house or coordinated by one organisation. His team works to all stages of RIBA and ISTRUCTE stages of work and enables contractors to deliver projects on-site providing risk evaluations, methodologies for execution of works and temporary works designs.

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