POLICY | HYWEL DAVIES Bridging the procurement gap The long-awaited Building Safety Bill will create a new regulator and make radical changes to the way we build. It will create a new safety regime for around 12,000 residential buildings but is it enough to change the way we build, asks Hywel Davies T DR HYWEL DAVIES is technical director at CIBSE www.cibse.org he Draft Building Safety Bill is a foretaste of the new world of building safety regulation. The building safety regulator (BSR), based in the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), will have new powers for many residential buildings in operation. This includes a new statutory role of building safety manager (BSM) for all residential higher-risk buildings, sometimes referred to as buildings in scope. As well as a BSM, they must have a safety case that persuades the regulator the building is safe to occupy and its management systems are adequate to keep it that way. They will also need to adopt the golden thread (see details at bit.ly/CJJul21HD), and to show they have the information about their building to support its safe occupation and operation. Beyond the 12,000 or so buildings in scope, a new system of competence assessment and recognition will apply to all building professionals of all disciplines working on all buildings, with a growing focus on regular, relevant, robust and meaningful continuing professional development and regular revalidation of professional registrations. New statutory duty holders will be introduced for all buildings, with a principal designer and a principal contractor role, extending the scope of current construction design and management requirements. There are changes to the building control system too, intended to level up standards across public and private sectors and drive greater focus on delivering safe outcomes from construction or refurbishment works, whatever the building and whoever the building inspector. The new regulator will control enforcement, with a clear remit to deliver meaningful and effective enforcement action that increases the risks and penalties of being caught and enforced against. At present, there is a widespread lack of awareness of these changes. It seems that many think the whole building safety programme only addresses residential buildings over 18m or six storeys high. Many seem totally unaware of mandatory CPD, new duty-holder roles and the new regime. There is a real gap between the reality of what is proposed and general understanding in the industry. But there are other gaps. It is common practice for invitations to tender to say that bidders must meet all relevant legislation and regulation. This is fine in theory, but if the client does not understand the requirements of the new regime, they cannot assess which bidders understand it let alone whether they comply with it. If work is awarded to bidders who failed to price for working to the new regime, the contract price will simply be inadequate. And we all know where that leads: cornercutting, cost-cutting and another lap of the race to the Staff Stock Service 16 July 2021 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE July 21 pp16-17 Hywel.indd 16 25/06/2021 16:15