by Iain McIlwee | 3 Oct, 2022 | Building Safety Act
Last week, FIS Technical Director, Joe Cilia joined representatives of the CPA to discuss a new white paper on new requirements for competence in the construction products sector.
The White Paper outlines proposals for a standard to unite everyone who uses or works with construction products under a single consistent way of defining construction product competence. It will apply to all the built environment sector, so this is one of a series of webinars for the different industries and this webinar is particularly aimed for manufacturers of construction products..
The panel discussed various topics ranging from implementation to how the white paper will take a coordinated approach for the built environment to unite behind this standard.
You can download your copy of the white paper here.
Rewatch the discussion here.
by Clair Mooney | 13 Sep, 2022 | Building Safety Act
CROSS has issued a report associated with missing fixing straps on Light Gauge Steel Framing Systems which may affect fire performance. This report references guidance issued by FIS earlier in the summer.
CROSS (Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures) is a unique reporting scheme sponsored by The Institution of Structural Engineers, the ICE, the IFE, and the HSE. Its purpose is to share lessons learned from structural and fire safety issues and help prevent future failures – by providing insight into how safety issues occur and spurring the development of safety improvement measures. All information available through CROSS is free.
Under the new Building Safety Act the Building Safety Regulator is required to appoint a person to establish and operate a system for the voluntary reporting of information about building safety. This function is currently being fulfilled through CROSS, which has been extended to include fire safety, in addition to structural safety, within its remit. Reporting through CROSS is confidential.
FIS Technical Director Joe Cilia commented: “CROSS perform a vital role in this new era for safety. We cannot afford to bury concerns, we all have a responsibility to ensure that we share vital information to help ensure that mistakes are not buried in projects, but learnings shared help improve our wider deliver of safer buildings. We look forward to working more closely with CROSS in improving safety in our sector and the wider built environment”.
Full details of the alert are available here.
by Clair Mooney | 8 Sep, 2022 | Building Safety Act, Insurance
Projects to tackle fire safety risks on high-rise residential buildings have been boosted by the publication of a new model insurance clause covering fire safety risks. The wording has been developed by the International Underwriting Association (IUA) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for use in work being completed under the government’s £4.5bn Building Safety Fund. It will help speed up the removal of unsafe cladding, encourage a greater safety culture within the construction industry and provide insurers with increased confidence in risk management processes employed by the construction sector.
The model clause is freely available for use by underwriters looking to provide professional indemnity insurance for building cladding remediation work. The Building Safety Fund was introduced in order to cover the cost of such refurbishment work on high rise residential blocks over 18m.
Levelling up Secretary, Greg Clarke said: “Our priority is making sure people’s homes are safe and that safety standards are high.
“Alongside our tough new regulatory regime, this new clause that has been developed with my department will help us do just that.
“We welcome the work of the IUA and the underwriters who are taking a proportionate approach to fire safety cover and I thank insurers in advance for using it.”
Chris Jones, IUA Director of Legal and Market Services, said:
“Our new model clause sets out a number of key risk management processes that will ensure work being carried out is conducted within recognised industry standards. This will help improve accountability for safety measures and foster an investment in quality construction.
“The market for construction professional indemnity insurance has been difficult in recent years, reflecting concerns about the potential for historic liabilities to develop into future claims following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Each new risk must continue to be assessed on a risk-by-risk basis, of course, but the clause should provide underwriters with greater confidence to offer effective insurance solutions for future work.”
A survey of IUA members in September last year revealed a cautious willingness amongst IUA members to underwrite fire safety risks on new projects to remove defective cladding from high rises. Around two thirds of respondents stated they would provide a limited form of cover, whilst a further 4% were happy to offer unrestricted protection.
The poll was carried out by the IUA’s Construction Professional Lines Working Group which was established in 2019 to encourage greater engagement between insurers, government, regulators and construction firms.
Copies of the IUA Building Safety Fund Cladding and Fire Safety Limited Exclusion and Aggregation Clause are freely available to download at https://www.iua.co.uk/IUA_Member/Press/Press_Releases_2022/IUA_publishes_new_fire_safety_clause_for_high_rise_repairs.aspx
Any questions or comments related to this clause should be fed to Iain McIlwee, (iainmcilwee@thefis.org) who is representing the FIS Community on the Construction Leadership Council’s Insurance Working Group
by Clair Mooney | 2 Sep, 2022 | Building Safety Act
The Setting the Bar report outlines a system of competence standards for all those working on higher‐risk buildings, and two of the Working Groups responsible for reviewing specific sectors have now published proposed standards for comment:
- Working Group 9 is consulting on the Framework for competence of Site Supervisors in England which covers individuals working under the supervision of a Principal Contractor and those supervising workers on a day‐to‐day basis. This will be of interest to those fulfilling the role of Site Supervisor, as well as those that delegate to, employ or train Site Supervisors. Comments should be submitted to the CIOB by Friday 30 September.
- Working Group 7 is consulting on the Framework for competence of Designers in England which covers organisations or individuals that prepare or modify designs for projects, as well as those that arrange for or instruct others to do so. This will be of interest to anyone fulfilling the role of a Designer, for example architects, engineers, surveyors, contractors, specialists, manufacturers and suppliers. Comments should be submitted to the RICS by Wednesday 5 October.
DLUHC is also consulting on the changes that will be made to Building Regulations to implement the new building safety regime. There are 12 different sections to the consultation, including dutyholder roles, gateways, change control process and more rigorous enforcement powers. Comments can be submitted online or via email by Wednesday 12 October.
by Iain McIlwee | 28 Jul, 2022 | Building Safety Act, Main News Feed
The Building Safety Act passed into Law in April 2022 and it brings into being a new Regulator – The Building Safety Regulator will help to deliver the two underlying objectives of the Act, namely securing the safety of people in and around buildings in relation to risks from buildings and improving building standards.
Contrary to popular belief, the The Building Safety Regulator has a wider remit than High Rise High Risk Buildings and is tasked to:
- implement a new, more stringent regulatory regime for high-rise buildings in England
- being the building control authority in England for building work on high-rise buildings
- overseeing and enforcing the new regime in occupation of high-rise buildings
- oversee the safety and performance of all buildings. This has two aspects:
- overseeing the performance of other building control bodies (local authorities and registered building control approvers (currently known as approved inspectors))
- understanding and advising on existing and emerging building standards and safety risks
- promote competence among industry professionals and regulators to raise standards in the design, construction, and management of buildings
The Regulator will be part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and so the mechanisms and enforcement approach will be familiar to the construction sector already immersed in compliance with CDM.
In a new Factsheet the Building Safety Regulator starts to outline how they imagine this will work in practice, starting with the clear principle (akin to that in CDM) that the person or entity that creates, or is responsible for, a building safety risk should be responsible for preventing, managing, and controlling that risk. This includes building designers, who have a responsibility to design a building that complies with relevant building regulations.
Regulatory intervention will be targeted on activities where there is high actual or potential harm arising from any breach. In judging how far dutyholders have taken steps to reduce or mitigate safety risks, the Building Safety Regulator will balance the degree of risk against the money, time or trouble needed to avert that risk in the particular circumstances, as well as the impact of any action on businesses and residents.
The Building Safety Regulator will expect that dutyholders, in turn, will adopt a sensible and proportionate approach to managing safety, focusing on significant risks.
It is intended that the Building Safety Regulator will employ a variety of methods to encourage and support dutyholders to meet the requirements of relevant Building Regulations and to manage fire and structural risks in buildings in a sensible and proportionate way. This reflects the aims in chapter 8 of the document: A reformed building safety regulatory system: government response to the Building a Safer Future consultation, published by MHCLG in April 2020.
The appropriate and proportionate use of enforcement powers, regulatory tools, and sanctions by the Building Safety Regulator will be set out in a published Enforcement Policy Statement (EPS) in due course.
For further information about the Building Safety Act, including an outline summary of what it all means to the finishes and interiors sector, click here
For further information from the HSE on how they will be supporting compliance and enforcing in the event of non-compliance click here.
by Iain McIlwee | 22 Jul, 2022 | Building Safety Act
In the week that the Grenfell Inquiry came to an end (the inquiring but anyway, it will be a while before the conclusions are made) we were greeted with a barrage of updates as Rt Hon Greg Clark picks up the mantle as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities from Michael Gove. The announcements included that 48 Developers have pledged to remediate fire safety defects in buildings over 11 metres that they have played a role in developing over the past 30 years.
This has been followed by a raft of new guidance around how government is going to honour their commitment “to protecting innocent leaseholders from the unfair burden of remediation costs to make their home safe”. Their focus is now the buildings with 2 or more residential dwellings and at least 11 metres in height or has at least five storeys (whichever is reached first). Whilst a lot of attention is on the cladding, the guidance makes it clear that the scope of this new regulatory framework is now far broader too.
Through the Building Safety Act Courts have been granted new powers to extend liability to associated companies . The aim is to ensure that civil cases for claims against defective buildings can be brought against companies associated with a developer, preventing the use of complex corporate structures to avoid liability. The government is clear that developers must pay to fix buildings they had a role in developing or refurbishing, even where they no longer own the building. The Act ensures that building owners who are – or are associated with – the developer must pay for the remediation of historical safety defects.
The guidance published this week starts to look at the definition of “relevant defect” and what buildings (and leaseholders) are in scope of the protections. There is plenty of information published on cladding where cladding remediation is regarded as the removal of or replacement of any part of a cladding system that meets both of the following conditions:
- it forms the outer wall of an external wall system
- it is unsafe
But the wider relevant defect approach which identifies that non-cladding remediation is work is undertaken to fix a relevant defect, which is not an unsafe cladding system defect.
Examples of non-cladding remediation include:
- replacing inappropriate fire doors
- fixing missing compartmentation, which limits how easily fire can spread through a building
- replacing combustible walkways or balconies
- reinforcing low-strength concrete beams to improve structural integrity
- fixing any other defect in scope of the relevant defect definition that is not a defect of the cladding system
Whilst the developer is in the cross-fire there it feels inevitable that the disputes will not have gone away and the battle ground has shifted. The likelihood is that the developers will be seeking redress through the supply chain and we got more than an inkling of this in the judgment recently handed down in the case Mulalley bs Martley Homes. Here contractor Mulalley was engaged on a design and build JCT 1998 Standard Form of Building Contract in 2005 to re-clad the exterior of the five tower blocks for Martley Homes. Full details of the case are available here (and well worth reading), but the headline is that that contractor is now required to pay £8 million in compensation. Commenting on the case FIS CEO, Iain McIlwee stated:
“This case is the first of many that will start to set precedent on historic claims and now that the Defective Premises Act has been updated and extended, it is likely that this will spread beyond the realms of cladding. We remain committed to ensuring that the mechanisms to manage disputes advance at the same speed as the Polluter Pays agenda so that the judgments are fair, but that huge time and resources is not wasted on legal fees and that we can focus our energies as an industry on getting to grips with the unacceptable legacy that the systemic failure created”
Detailed guidance from the FIS on the Building Safety Act via our Quality Hub here.
You can access the full range of guidance published this week here. We have included links to some of the most relevant sections below:
Page 13 of 24« First«...1112131415...20...>Last
