Building Safety – First stage complete in journey towards fully competent installer workforce

The construction and built environment sector must maintain momentum to ensure the competence of installation organisations and employees as a key report highlights ‘red flags’ amid wider progress on Building Safety.

A report has been published setting out the current state of competence arrangements for those installing products and systems in buildings. Prepared by members of Working Group 2, which was set up as part of the post-Grenfell Competence Steering Group, volunteers from Working Group 2 have worked with six pilot installer sectors – Dry Lining, Domestic Plumbing and Heating, Fire Detection and Alarms, Fire Stopping Specialist, Rainscreen Cladding, and Roofing – to benchmark existing competence arrangements.

This Pilot – Phase One stage sets a baseline to identify shortfalls and considers the changes needed to create competence frameworks that comply with the recommendations of Setting the Bar. In 2020, Setting the Bar outlined how industry must improve the competence of those procuring, designing, constructing, inspecting, assessing, managing, installing and maintaining higher risk residential buildings.

The report recognises that good practice exists in each of the six sectors that allows them to demonstrate elements of competence. Yet there are elements of each sectors’ arrangements that the working group has red rated, showing that significant work is required to meet the requirements of Setting the Bar.

Each sector will now move to develop sector-specific competence frameworks that play to existing strengths and close off any red flag issues raised in the report. This process – which will also develop a timeline and implementation plan for each sector – is expected to take six to nine months.

The report also calls on other installer sectors to begin their own competence journey now, offering guidance to help them do so which Working Group 2 has developed during the pilots.

Iain McIlwee, FIS Chief Executive who was a participant in the Dry Lining pilot, said:

“FIS has taken an active role in this work and will continue to work with our members and the wider sector to ensure that competency is understood, the support mechanisms needed to deliver a competent workforce are in place and that we are able to track, manage and reward competence effectively.  We have championed and led the Dry Lining work because it is an important part of most building operations, it is a labour intensive process and frankly has been hugely undervalued in the construction process.  This work is the building block, a  fresh start not only to delivering a better competency framework, but helping to raise the profile and change expectations about the vital work that dry liners do.  We do not underestimate the enormity of this task given the current socioeconomic backdrop, but do recognise that it is essential work that we must take on together.”

Mark Reynolds, Sponsor for the CLC’s People and Skills Network, said:

“Publication of Working Group 2’s latest report marks an important milestone in progress towards improved standards of installer competence in the built environment. The CLC will continue to do all we can to assist with the pilots and I would urge other installer sectors now to embark on their own competence journeys, drawing on the resources which Working Group 2 has provided.”

Nick Jarman, Chair of Working Group 2, said:

“There has been much collaboration since the formation of Working Group 2, focussed on how we can learn from the lessons of the past and forge a new pathway of improvement for the future with the objective of providing a safer built environment overall. I would like to thank sector representatives and my Working Group 2 colleagues for getting the pilot process to the point this report can be published. Working Group 2 looks forward to further engagement and collaboration with the wider installer sector to continue progress on this crucial workstream.”

After receiving Royal Assent on 28 April 2022 the Building Safety Bill is now available for scrutiny.

FIS will continue to look at how the Bill will impact our community and will keep members up-to-date with developments. We have prepared an initial summary of the key implications that you can access here.

 FIS is committed to supporting our members with compliance and ensuring the Bill supports a better safety and a more collaborative approach to procurement.

The Bill received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022. FIS will continue looking at how the Bill will impact our community and will keep members up-to-date with developments.

This is without doubt the biggest shake-up of Building Regulations since they were introduced in 1666, placing new demands on competence in the workforce, product selection and documenting process (e.g. digital record keeping) on all in the supply chain.

FIS is committed to supporting our members with compliance and ensuring the Bill supports a better safety and a more collaborative approach to procurement.

In light of recent Parliamentary discussions on the use of retentions in construction, Build UK, of which FIS is a member, along with other members of the CLC met with Construction Minister Lee Rowley to discuss how the Government and industry can work together on this issue, building on the work previously undertaken by Build UK through its Roadmap to Zero Retentions.

With any legislation on retentions unlikely during this Parliament, Build UK will be reviewing the milestones in its roadmap over the coming months, including the Minimum Standards on Retentions and the table of public sector retention policies.

Dame Judith Hackitt has also made the case for removing retentions, stating that they are ‘totally inconsistent with collaborative procurement’. Speaking earlier this month at the launch of the Guidance on Collaborative Procurement for Design and Construction to Support Building Safety, she outlined how “suppliers assume they will never receive their retention payments…so therefore from the outset of projects with retentions involved they are looking for other ways to cut costs, cut corners and save money in whatever way possible”.

Read the FIS Position Paper on Retentions which FIS advocates are an archaic way to manage quality and no longer fit for purpose.  They undermine a positive culture in construction and engender a lack of trust.  

Cladding remediation update

The latest figures published by DLUHC show that, of the 483 high‐rise residential buildings identified to have unsafe ACM cladding:

• Remediation work has been fully completed on 316 (65%)
• Work has been completed and is awaiting Building Control sign off on a further 56 (12%)
• Work has started on 80 (17%)
• Of the remaining 31 (6%), 16 have a remediation plan in place, 14 are intending to remediate and one doesn’t have a clear remediation plan.

The Building Safety Fund for the remediation of unsafe non‐ACM cladding systems received 2,827 registrations, 30% of which have now been invited to apply for funding, with 6% in the process of having their eligibility assessed.

Funding for cladding remediation
Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has reached an agreement with developers that will see them commit a minimum of £2 billion to fix fire‐safety issues with their own buildings. To date, 36 of the UK’s largest homebuilders have pledged to fix all buildings over 11 metres that they have played a role in developing over the last 30 years, and Gove has urged other developers to sign up, stating that those who refuse to do so could be prevented from building and selling new homes in the future. Alongside this, the Government has confirmed plans to extend the Building Safety Levy to be paid by developers on all new residential buildings in England, which is expected to raise up to £3 billion over the next decade to support remediation works.

Gove has also written to the product manufacturing sector, expressing his disappointment at its failure to make a public funding commitment and reiterating that the Government will do ‘whatever it takes’ to make sure they are held to account through the powers established in the Building Safety Bill.

RICS updates EWS1 Forms
RICS has updated its EWS1 form to confirm that all assessments of external walls should now be carried out in accordance with PAS 9980. Whilst the Government has stated that buildings below 18 metres do not require an ESW1 form to be completed, RICS guidance continues to advise lenders to ask for EWS1 forms on buildings of six storeys or fewer where ACM, MCM or HPL panels are present.

For a summary of the Building Safety Act 2022 click here