Tag: Sleep Like A Baby

Gavin Dunn, Chief Executive of the UK Fire Protection Association (FPA)

Recent changes to building regulations have brought a much greater emphasis on fire safety across all types of buildings, but particularly for high-rise residential buildings. The sector is now taking a more risk-averse approach to material specification and system design, which means the products we choose, the way we use them, and the way we evidence their performance are under far greater scrutiny than ever before.

The Fire Protection Association (FPA) is a non-profit organisation, owned by the UK insurance industry and the National Fire Chiefs Council. Our sole purpose is to help industry, construction, and property owners reduce risks within their portfolios, both from fire and wider resilience issues. We see first-hand how changes in regulation, oversight, and market expectations are reshaping how the industry designs, builds, and maintains high-rise buildings.

New regulatory framework

The Building Safety Act, the creation of the Building Safety Regulator, and the requirement for the “golden thread” of information have fundamentally changed the regime for higher-risk residential buildings. These projects now follow a formal gateway process. Gateways 1,2 and 3 are essentially planning, construction and before occupation with regulator sign-off being required at each stage before the project can progress.

For those involved in design and specification, this means that products must have proven performance and are tested and certified to relevant standards for their intended use. It’s fundamental that any change such as using products differently from their original specification or in combination with other products that weren’t originally envisioned, the information is reported back to the design team who must then check that these products are still safe, appropriate and compliant. Additional checks such as engineering reviews or new fire tests are essential to confirm they remain safe and compliant. It might also need regulator sign off as well.

The shift to non-combustible materials

Following Grenfell Tower and other fires internationally, the specification of combustible materials, particularly in facade systems, has come under intense scrutiny. There has been a significant shift in market expectations, with insurers, investors, and end users showing a strong preference for non-combustible materials in high-rise buildings.

This change is about more than just meeting regulatory requirements. It is also about reducing reputational risk, protecting public trust, and ensuring the long-term safety of buildings. Non-combustible materials offer the most straightforward route to achieving these goals, giving greater confidence in both compliance and performance.

Testing, verification, and installation

As an industry, we must move beyond simply selecting compliant products. Correct usage and installation are equally critical. Too often, the right products are specified but installed incorrectly, and the data shows that poor installation is currently our biggest failure point.

That is why additional verification steps are so important. Increasingly, products are being tested not just for certification, but for wider or combined uses. This data provides fire engineers with the evidence they need to make sound judgements. In parallel, inspection processes on site must confirm that products are installed exactly as intended.

The importance of the golden thread

The products chosen, how they are used and how they are installed must be documented as part of the golden thread of information. It becomes the single source of truth when it comes to a building. This provides a detailed and accessible record for future owners and operators, ensuring they have the knowledge needed to make safe, informed decisions about maintenance or alterations. Without this transparency, public confidence in building safety will remain fragile.

Looking ahead

The initial industry response to the new regulatory regime has been to specify non-combustible materials wherever possible, and this has been the right approach to rebuild trust. Over time, as testing regimes, certification processes, and regulatory oversight continue to strengthen, we may reach a point where certain combustible materials can be reintroduced in very controlled and well-evidenced ways.

Until then, prioritising proven, non-combustible systems remains the most risk-averse and publicly acceptable choice. Manufacturers such as IG Masonry Support play a vital role in this, providing A1-rated, fully tested solutions and the technical expertise to ensure they are specified and installed correctly.

The challenge now is to maintain our focus on what matters most: delivering buildings that perform in the way society needs them to perform. It is really important that we re-establish public trust and we build buildings that perform in the way society needs them to perform. That means creating buildings that are healthy, energy efficient and great places to live, while also giving people the peace of mind that they are safe and secure when things go wrong.

 

By Richard Harral, Chief Executive Officer at Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE)

The drive to deliver safer buildings has never been more important, or more urgent. At Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) we are a multidisciplinary Professional Engineering Institute with a Royal Charter.

Our members work across the full project lifecycle, and we are an active and engaged community, deeply committed to improving the built environment, and, above all, to making buildings safer for the people who use them.

There’s a growing consensus in the industry as to where we need to end up in terms of safety. We need to ensure that everyone involved in designing, specifying, constructing and maintaining buildings is assessed for competence and that there is a clearly defined understanding what they can and cannot do safely. The truth is our industry has not always done this well. In fact, competence has often been managed in a patchy, inconsistent way, or sometimes not at all.

It is no longer acceptable to claim that a person, system or product can be trusted simply because we believe that is the case. In particular, third-party testing of products becomes fundamental, not only in enabling designers to have confidence in what they are specifying, but also to help rebuild trust in a broader sense; that the products are going to deliver the safe outcomes people quite rightly expect.

This means that we have to move beyond minimum standards of compliance. It’s critical that product and system manufacturers and everyone in the industry starts to look at how they deliver the right outcome, rather than simply box ticking to secure sign off from building control or any other authority.

This is why the new competence frameworks that are being developed by the Industry Competence Steering Group (ICSG) and BSI, and the new ways of applying them, are so valuable. One good example of these new standards is  BS 8670-2, a companion to BS 8670-1, which is the core criteria for building safety and competence frameworks. While Part One sets our general principals, Part Two focuses on construction products and sets out what competencies people need have to be able to specify, use, install, maintain and manage construction products to ensure the right outcomes.

The shift towards competency based systems will help continuously upskill our industry. It will encourage people to seek out learning that’s directly relevant and applicable and focuses on maintaining competence throughout their career. In relation to construction products, this will be vital in helping everyone make better decisions throughout the life of a building.

The Building Safety Act (2022) has changed people’s accountabilities; and the timescales in which they can be held to account. This means that in addition to focusing on safe outcomes, everyone has to be more mindful about how they can defend their decisions if something does go wrong.

The advice we give is simple: when in doubt, apply the precautionary principle. What does that mean in practice? It means utilising systems and approaches that you know, understand and trust. It means adding extra levels of mitigation to ensure higher degrees of certainty that the systems and products you are using are going to perform as expected, throughout the lifecycle of the building.

It’s important that construction professionals, building users and the residents who they serve have peace of mind and confidence that the right outcomes are being achieved in a context where buildings are becoming increasingly complex, we are asking them to perform to higher standards over time, both in terms of safety and energy efficiency. The only way that we are going to achieve this peace of mind is if we think differently about how we design and specify.

That means taking a holistic view of building performance. We have to consider how each element will perform in relation to and in combination with others, rather than looking at a single product’s conformity. We must also look at additional levels of mitigation where we have any concerns, or doubts, about the overall performance of the building when it’s actually in use.

This definitely means leaning to a greater extent on third-party certification and testing of both products and systems – and increasing the number of systems that are tested at scale. It may also mean narrowing the supply chain we use so that we work with products and systems on a more frequent basis. We must become more familiar and confident in the way that they perform and in the way that we need to use them.

This is where manufacturers have a critical role to play, by providing tested, well-documented solutions and the technical support that helps designers and contractors specify with confidence. IG Masonry Support clearly understand this imperative, and it is great to see the investment they are making in helping delivery better quality and safer outcomes.

At CABE, we are committed to working with proactive professionals to, help build a safe, sustainable and equitable built environment. This is important to our members, who are professionals with a real passion for the work that they do. It’s also fundamental to ensuring that people are safe, and feel safe in the homes and workplaces that matter to them.