BIM4Housing: Design Working Group Meeting 10-04-2024
JAREK WITYK Das, following what we did yesterday, if you share your screen so we can see the pointers and I’ll make changes if I need to.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ What the aim is for me, we’ve taken on board, this is Jarek’s workflow diagram which is fantastic. And then we’ve had input from various people within groups in terms of commenting. Then Jarek and I sat down with another meeting yesterday just to try and pick some of these things up. And what we’re aiming to do is to walk us through this workflow diagram and ensure that we’ve got the facts correct. And then what we’ve done is as we go through this there are some yellow items that are questions that we have which we need input from others.
Again, the aim really is to make sure the facts are correct and the workflow is correct. Visually we will work on that afterwards, so I’m not so worried about the visual aspects, but the aim that we want to end up today with a guide that allows people to go, OK, if we’re starting from the top here it allows them to figure out whether their project, whether it’s a refurb or a new build or something, falls within the gateway process or not. And then the consequence of that and the various workflow processes that you need to go through to essentially get to the end which is to be able to occupy the buildings and whatever that may be.So that’s the aim for today.
Basically I’m going to click on things like this just to show where we are. Essentially the aim is that you start from here and then the aim is really to establish if the building must go through the gateway process. So what we’ve done is we’ve asked a question in this area, is it existing in occupation building, and then these diagrams here or these nodes. One thing to note is that on the left hand side Jarek has got his sort of symbols and the key for it, we’ve move that in to a readable place once we know which symbols are specific to this workflow. But the X symbol here means an exclusive decision making, so either a yes or a no, so is the building in occupation at the moment?
If you go to the left which is no, then we’re assuming therefore that it’s a new build. Now these little blue things here are essentially hyperlinks, so Jarek has embedded hyperlinks. If I click on that, for example, then this guidance comes through. And so wherever you can see a little link like that it means that if you click on that kind of government logo it takes you to that. So, what we’ve tried to do is to identify the key takeaways from that link and put it here. So, is the building at least 18 metres in height or at least 7 storeys etc. and that’s the height criteria generally speaking, and again there is a link here which is quite useful…because it includes the diagrams which the government have put out.
So if I just scroll down you have all of these diagrams and to help everyone ensure that they’re measuring the number of storeys or counting the number of storeys or counting the height in the correct way. So, that’s the kind of aim as we go through the presentation. So if it’s clearly a new building and it falls within the height category. Well, let’s say it doesn’t, so you go through to no and that’s the end of that process in terms of whether it’s defined from a high-risk building. If the answer is yes in terms of the height, then there are the need to look at it from the use class, what is it used for? Residential care home, hospital.
And again, if the answer to that question is no then you have a further set of questions and then depending on the answer for that, if it’s yes then that’s the end of the process. And if it’s no then it goes in to the building can be considered a high-risk building. So that is the workflow let’s say on the left hand side i.e. for a new build project. I won’t talk through every single one of these questions, but that is where we believe that if it falls within the height, it falls within the use categories, then it needs to be considered a high risk building. So that’s dealing with the left hand side, primarily to do with new buildings.
If the answer to that first question is an existing building that’s be occupied, yes, then there is a slightly different criteria, again the hyperlink is there. Slightly different to the new build in terms of, what we can see it’s to do with the use class. So again, we've tried to deal with it from a high point of view. so if it falls within the height then there’s an existing building and the answer is yes, then you get asked a second question which is will the project or the work that you’re doing make it into a high-risk building? So that’s the first step question, so if it’s yes then again the question about the use class kicks in.
And from what we can see the main difference really is that the care home and the hospital, if it’s a refurb or an existing building, if it falls into that then actually you don’t need to go through the gateway process. That’s our understanding, it seems to be what the government is saying. Again, so if you go through, yes, it’s 18 metres or it will make it…
JAREK WITYK Sorry Das, I notice that the question is in the wrong place, so I’ll have to amend this, it doesn’t make sense. Because the answer should be no, but we can’t have two no answers on exclusive gateway, so I’ll revise this bit to make sense because it’s illogical.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ OK, but I think what we understood is that if it’s within the height and if the answer is yes, but it’s been used for these use classes.
JAREK WITYK Yeah, but the previous question, if you answer if the building is at least 18 metres long or 7 storeys then the following question will the proposed work result in a building becoming at least is kind of redundant.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, I guess the point here that we’ve been looking at was if it’s no…
JAREK WITYK Yeah, and then I should go back to yes.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ we’ve had some really useful feedback from Mo from some knowledge that he has from some documentation that he’s working with which will help us fill in some of the gaps as well because the document that he has is essentially a text based document of this workflow. And obviously what we’re trying to do in this little group is to create a diagram rather than a text that that’s read. So we are trying to prevent the information in a different way so that someone can simply follow it using their finger and get to the answer. So we think that'll be useful as a tool. While Jarek is working on that essentially the aim here is to identify again, one of the questions that we had is in terms of refurbishment work.
So when I was listening to the HSE webinars a couple of months ago they talked about the fact that if you’re doing refurbishment works within say bathrooms or kitchens, or the work is self-certified say like Corgi the gas specialist, then you don’t need to apply for Building Control approval etc. That’s what I picked up from the webinar from the HSE. Again, it'll be useful to understand whether we've got that correct. What I'm aware of is that if you're obviously working in the communal areas of an existing let’s say 10-storey building, then you do need to because you’re likely to affect things like fire doors or detection etc. So that question there I think is correct, but we may need to phrase that more accurately. So the idea of this top half is to essentially determine whether the project that you’re working on, whether it’s a new build, rerfurb, amendment to an existing building, it leads you to the part of it needing to be considered a high-risk building and therefore go through the gateways.
Where the process is ending, it doesn’t mean that obviously you don’t have to apply for Building Control etc, but what we’re trying to identify here is the aim of this initial work flow is to figure out whether your building needs to go through the gateways. I think what we’ll do is we might have another little session and the essentially issue this as some sort of PDF so that, it’s rather than having people to log-in, it might make it more accessible for feedback on the wider teams. Richard, we’ll share that with yourself so you can share that with the other groups as well. I think that might get more engagement rather than a link.
So if the building is considered a high-risk building then notify the client and then the sort of side bit here. I think you’ve added this in overnight, Jarek, I don’t know whether you want to quickly take about that right hand side, but that’s more about setting up the OIRs and AIRs etc.
JAREK WITYK That information is based on ISO 19650 information management for deliver and operations phase of the project. So I’ve plugged it in because it’s relevant because we’re supposed to have this golden thread of information that’s part of it. So I tried to capture what the requirements and deliverables are for specific teams. So that part is for the clients, at that point if the client has been notified that the building or project he’s planning is to be considered as a high-risk building then he should plug it in those requirements and consider those requirements when creating appointments requirements. And also that would influence the organisational requirements and so and and so on which will have an impact on the project itself or the operation of the asset.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, that makes sense and I guess we mustn’t forget some of the other things that we’ve talked about, things like the ISO 19650, the BIM maturity level 2, they're all part and parcel of that golden thread which was obviously a requirement of one mode demonstrated. So, once a client has been notified we’ve got the three branches down here and two of them are, if I go the far left one which is building regulations.
JAREK WITYK Did you talk about this yellow decision point about refurbishment in bathrooms?
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ What I talked about was that my understanding is, this item here, I don’t know if anyone in the team has any experience of that but it may be something that we definitely need to get clarity on from others. But our understanding is that let’s say it is a 10-storey building, but the work is limited to within the department and you’re doing works or getting a new electrics checked then it doesn’t need to go through the gateway process. That’s why we put it in there, but I don’t know if anyone in the call may know differently or have experience. What we’ll probably have to do is maybe put our question mark symbol so it’s clear as to where we’ve got holes in our understanding as well, when we share it.
So if I move on to…once a client is notified then you’ve got this one branch which is regulations, again we put a hyperlink in there and that takes you to the online digital collated regulations, jut because we’re mindful that if with the competency requirements, you’re not going to know every single change to the building regulations documents or the approved documents. So the best way that we do in our office, for example, is just make sure everyone looks at the digital guidance link rather than downloading which may become out-of-date. So we though that would be helpful to put the gov.uk link for all of the approved documents so you’re looking at the right documents and the most up-to-date.
And the question we’ve asked them is has building regulations changed, you’ve got Part B that’s just changed in terms of there was an amendment that came out regarding the two staircases. So to the that question if the answer is no then obviously ensure compliance with building regulations. If the answer is yes then obviously assess the impact on the design or the works that have been carried out, ensure compliance and if you have achieved it, great, if not then obviously you have this sort of feedback loop so you go round and round until you have. And then if it’s yes, then that we’ve kind of got feeding in to the information that will be submitted for the gateway 2 process, for example, so in order to get that certification. As well as we’ve got an arrow again going down to gateway 3 server completion.
So that’s sort of like one workflow, I think that’s fairly clear. Then you’ve got the Fire Safety Act, again, we probably need some help from the wider team and the fire specialists because what we understand is with the Fire Safety Act, maybe Jarek on thing here is we could add the link to the Fire Safety Act webpage as well from the government and the overall one for the Building Safety Act as well, just to keep that same consistency. The Fire Safety Act, to implement fire safety measures measures the duty holder needs to look at to assess the risk, use fire assessment. Again we’d welcome input from the fire specialist teams about this element, but again our understanding is that…Jarek, you’ve added this little bit in here as well, design team response.
JAREK WITYK Yeah, part of the process, and I think I put this in the right place just before gateway 2, the design team would be engaged in a project and they have to respond with the specific response, the deliverables, which is the information delivery plan. Which also needs to be part of the golden thread or information, that’s why I put it there. So I just try to make it more relevant because the symbols before we had it grouped, and it wasn’t really good, so I think that makes more sense.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ OK, and again what I don’t know 100% is does all of this information and gong through this process have to go into, I think it would make sense to go into gateway 2, or whether actually this is a process that also feeds in to gateway 3 and beyond during occupation.
JAREK WITYK I think both, it’s just I literally finished working on it five minutes before this meeting so it’s not finished yet, basically.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ My understanding with the Fire Safety Act is obviously when you have the existing buildings they have to be registered now all of that period is finished now, so this requires that kind of continual assessment of the building, doing the risk assessments etc. So I believe this process feeds in to gateway 2, gateway 3 and the lifecycle of the building. And then the final one is the kind of key workflow, the major workflow, it’s just got moved to the left here a bit it’s the Building Safety Act. And again I’m not an expert on this defective premises in view of insurance and stuff so we need a little bit of guidance about that in terms of how these work, what do we need to do. So I’m not 100% sure on those, but I know you’ve got the arrow going back to, so from the building safety, defective premises review of insurance regulation, that feeding back into the feedback loop…
JAREK WITYK Yeah, because this is part of the client’s responsibility so I guess it should be reviewing the requirements following the Building Safety Act and the decision tree so far.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, I think that will be useful for us to understand and maybe we could make some of these arrows different colours so that it’s easier to see the question. From the fire safety and the defective premises, that’s not something I’;m 100% clear about. And the final thing, essentially in terms of the Building Safety Act, so we’ve established that the building is a high-risk building, a couple of notes here in the sense that the Building Safety Regulator is now under the HSE and they will act as the building control body for all high-risk buildings. From the information I got from Mo yesterday, apparently if you’ve got a high-risk building and a non high-risk building within the same development you can theoretically go to the BS or the local authority or someone else for the non-high-risk building, or you can ask for both projects to be under the new Regulator.
Basically the bottom line is that you cannot have an approved inspector or the local authority being your building control for high-risk buildings, it must be the Building Safety Regulator. They will nominate and appoint the relevant people with the relevant, I think you have different grades now in terms of building control and the approved inspectors, depending on the complexity of the project there are different grades. One thing we had as a question was material change of use and any work related to high-risk? 25mins 10secs ceased to be such a building. Kind of a funny one I guess because if you’ve already got a 7-storey building and you’re demolishing or taking away a floor, does that then still need to go through the gateway process? I don’t really know how often that scenario will occur. Or the change of use, so if it’s a residential at the moment but you’re turning it into a commercial fit out, how does that…?
Anything that the project does to take it away from a high-risk building, do you still have to go through the gateways? So I think we may put a question mark next to this one as well. We’ll identify them somehow more clearly, I guess, we can work on that in the background. The Building Safety Act obviously brought a couple of new bodies into things, there was the national regulated construction product for products, again we put a link to the most relevant thing that we can find. And then the new homes ombudsman, again a link to that. And then this one, the update registration board, we put a link to at the moment the RIBA have a list of registered architects who have deemed themselves to be able to do the Building Safety Act PD role, so we’ve put a link for that and I’m sure that will evolve and change. And then the registered building control advisors, there’s a list for England and there’s a list for Wales, so again we put those links in.
So then we’re moving on to gateway 1, the first gateway. This is the fire statement and the HSE…is a consultee at the gateway 1. So what we understand from that is that there are at the moment these planning advice portals, so it’s almost like a free pre-app service to understand what do you need to submit about your project or if you’ve got any questions about. The aim of this gateway is really to ensure that the design team, the client, have thought about what is the fire strategy for the building, how does the emergency services come and access it, so making sure the design has thought about and has a strategy for dealing with the risk of a fire. so we’ve put in a couple of links here that we found one is the government planning advisory one and then the planning gateway 1 dedicated email address for where you can email your queries. There’s meant to be a 21 day maximum response time. And the Building Safety Regulator is statutory consultee during the planning determination, so that’s a key change there.
So we understand the workflow being that you’ve got to submit your registration for the accountable person, we’ve got a figure of 251 but again not totally sure so hence why we put it in yellow, whether that is the current rate or does it change depending on the size of the building or the project. So again, if anyone has got any thoughts on that, that will be great. And then we put a link in, which is issued by the government, about the fire safety form that must be submitted which asks some of these questions about the project and the building. And we also had that there is a 28 day period for feedback on that for them to come back and ask for more details and resubmit it. That’s what we currently have, but we have a question mark in there, in the key building information.
Jarek, the thing I did read in the one that Mo sent through was whether this key building information, what I read in his one was that this is required also after the building has been registered after gateway 3. So I don’t know whether this little bit is in the wrong place, but what I read from his documentation was that…
JAREK WITYK But it needs to be submitted before gateway 2, so if I understood you correctly you said it needs to be resubmitted or confirmed, or what?
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ It talks about, in the document that Mo shared…I’ll find it and I’ll share it with you.
JAREK WITYK Also let’s check if any one of you have any comments on this, that will be helpful as well.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, because it talked about the need for…within 28 days of submission of the building registration to the Building Safety Regulator the principle accountable person must submit to the BSR as to prescribed building information. And this list that you’ve got here looks similar to what they’ve got, the4 primary use materials, roof buildup, fire doors, fixtures. I think that this part is key building information within 28 days of the submission of the building registration. Obviously if you do have that information at stage 2 and stage 3 then that can only be a good thing, rather than having to cobble all of that information together at the end.
JAREK WITYK Yeah, but you also mentioned yesterday about these possible revisions, but if you submit something once you want to update the same information rather than send separate information. So somehow we need to represent this. Let’s check it first and then see what we can do.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Ans I think the only other thing was whether there is something to check with George and the other team, does this list here actually represent the Regulation 38? Jarek, you may know whether actually does Regulation 38 pick up on all of these things, or is this different to the Regulation 38 fire information requirements for a project. That’s the other question that I have…they refer to this as the prescribed building information, this list is referred to as. So rather than the key building information we know that it’s been the list of prescribed building information. Maybe we just change the key building information to prescribed building information.
My understanding that at gateway 1 the main change here is that when you’re submitting planning application is you’re going to do the fire statement. And the other question is gateway 1 sort of sits outside of the gateway process in terms of the Building Safety Act, do all projects have to have a fire statement? Even if it’s not a high-risk building or project, do you still now need to submit this fire statement? My experience on a couple of smaller projects that we’ve done is yes, we do. But again it will be good to get that question clarified with input. And my understanding is that there is this 21 days to come back as part of this consultation process during the planning.
The ones we’ve gone for gateway 1 for gateway 2, these are the questions that we have. So, gateway 2 is a hard-stop, and there are documentations which talk about the fact that you could submit a piece of information and you’ve got to get that approved before you start that particular piece of work onsite.
PAUL WHITE Just going back to the list just above there, you’ve not really got compartmentation on there and compartmentation and the space risks need to go there because you can’t really select some of the things like fire dampers, smoke control dampers etc without knowing what walls they’re going to go through.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ That’s broadly speaking, I understand the compartmental and that the compartmentation of the building in plan section and elevation etc.
PAUL WHITE But it’s not just the compartmentation, it’s what you’re going to use. So, is it going to be blockwork? Is it going to be partition wall? What type of partition wall is it going to be? Is it going to be single skin, double skin? Quadruple skin if you’ve got two laters of board. Because you can’t select some of the other products, and certainly for instance there’s issues with the penetration seals, even with pipes and cables, if they’re either in the wrong place and also the wrong size and you don’t know through which compartment construction they’re going through.
And we probably need to have that because you can’t then select some of the penetration seals for pipes and cables, potentially you can’t select the doors, potentially you can’t select the fire dampers, if you don’t know what they are. And I’m fairly certain that during the next stage they will at least be a minor thing that you would have to put back up and if we’re not careful we’ll end up with six-week delays etc. Or delays right at the end when somebody has done something that they shouldn’t have done.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, that’s a really good point. Paul, in terms of my initial kind of thing with this list, as I said from the information that Mo sent yesterday this seems to be the list that’s required post-registration. I’m not saying obviously we don’t need to know this during to get to gateway 2.
PAUL WHITE Sorry, I got confused, I thought we were at gateway 2.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ No, we are, it’s an open question in terms of initially Jarek and I had this list here, but reading this other document, specialist contractors guidance, this key building information is referred to as something that needs to be submitted 28 days from when the building is registered i.e.after the project has got the building completion certificate, prior to occupation. But obviously we need to know all of this before stage 2 as well, but this particular phrase seems to be something that’s noted at the end, theoretically speaking, from the guidance. I don’t know if that’s something true or not, but that’s what I’m reading at the moment.
PAUL WHITE I think the whole idea generally is at gateway 2 this is what we’re going to build and gateway 3 matches it because you’ve built what you said you were going to.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ And this is why I think in a way where Jarek has it, it’s almost correct, we probably just duplicated at the end as well because you’ve got to know, you’re gonna design, you’ve got to build and then you’ve got to confirm that all of those three things are the same. They may change because of some change control etc. So maybe there is no harm in leaving that there because I don’t think this level…is necessarily needed for gateway 1 though, but it definitely needs for 2, it makes absolute sense for that at the end.
JAREK WITYK Maybe we should move this in between gateways to make more sense.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yeah, that makes more sense. I think what we need to check is the duration of the 28 days. 28 days when I read it was relating to that you had to within 28 days of registering the building to submit this information, so that’s a maximum of 28 days. But that was more referring to if it’s after stage 3. The general questions we have at gateway 2 is again the cost. I think that there is a fixed cost for a submission and then depending on the nature of the works or the project the BSR have hourly rates that they will apply depending on the input they need from their multidisciplinary design team. So, for example, if it’s completing the fluid dynamics bit of work they need to review.
So the design team, the contractor, submit a CFD report. The BSR will also appoint someone to review that and get their feedback and that’s done on an hourly rate so I guess there would be different hourly rates for different specialisms within the Building Safety Regulator side. What I don’t know is, it’s a bit like planning whether there is a cost that’s determined by the size of the project, so square meterage and/or use and/or both. If anyone has got any links on the cost of submission that would be really useful. And then again the only understanding that I had in reading things. Let's say you do submit the information for gateway 2 approval. The Building Safety Regulator has 12 weeks to review and determine it.
I think what they generally say is that if you’re able to submit information in packages or systems, I guess that makes it easier for them to review and not become a massive bottleneck. But speaking to Jarek yesterday, you can’t necessarily have a completed design if you’re trying to submit in the traditional tender package scenario. You might submit the GAs, but they hadn’t necessarily picked up or completed the design for the fire doors for example. But theoretically, you could submit a set of information and the BSR have 12 weeks. Interestingly I read something which talked about the fact that if they don’t complete that review in 12 weeks it’s not that automatically it’s approved, I think it’s automatically rejected.
So the default is that if the BSR miss their 12 weeks the scheme is not approved and it hasn’t got gateway 2, which is quite interesting because it leaves whoever is submitting it in a bit of a limbo. And I think the BSR are saying, well, if it takes us more than 12 weeks then the information you’ve given isn’t clear enough, we’re having to go through it. And you haven’t, as the applicant and the client, made it easy for us to understand why your design complies with the regulations. That’s how I read the statement around that. So Jarek, maybe what we need to do is do a little thing about, again I’ll have a look at the information that Mo sent. but it was sort of saying that after 12 weeks if they don’t respond that’s not actually immediate approval, it’s actually a rejection. It’s a bit like the ? 43mins 31secs where if someone doesn’t respond it’s not actually that it goes in to dispute.
JAREK WITYK That would be good to show as a process.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Exactly, so the consequences of that thing. So then in terms of what do we need to submit, we had here what information shall we provide that’s safety critical only or everything?…the phrase functional requirements of a building. My understanding is that pretty much you have to submit that information, I’ve not gone through this process but the way that I’m understanding this is you submit information, I guess a package of drawings for the BSR. We have to create little file notes or technical notes in front of that package of information to say we think the staircase is compliant because we’ve looked at building regulation B in terms of fire, M accessibility, K in terms of risk for falling and we have designed it so that it meets those things by making a particular width, the treads and the risers are correct and the balustrades correct.
That is what I'm imagining we would have to do as designers collectively with the rest of the team, it’s to say why do we think our submission of our design is compliant. And then it talks about as Jarek was pointing out, the schedule 1 from A to S of the building regs which the HSE in their webinars talk about we haven’t changed the technical requirements of the submission, what we have changed is the process. So they talked about a building being built last year, if technically that followed the building regs then it should be the same for now, but the process is obviously very different.Thats what they were highlighting in this webinar I watched, and I’ll share the HSE website link. A good set of webinars because you’re hearing from the horse’s mouth.
I think it will be useful to understand people have submitted information already for any gateway 2s, how did they present it. My feeling is that you would need to give a narrative as to why your design complies. The Building Control, the BSR, are not there to stop mistakes, they’re there to read it and approve and take a view on it. The other thing that I understand is that once, this thing here Jarek is after gateway 2, so this Building Control notices. So once you’ve submitted all of the information and I’ve got gateway 2 approval then this notice has to go off, noticing of starting onsite. So what I was reading yesterday was that for a high-risk building you have to give 5 days before starting onsite notice to the Building Safety Regulator. So I guess that they can mobilise their team to come and visit the site, for example.
Now the definition of starting commencement is quite specific. The starting date is not about stripping out or demolition, but it’s when you’re actually putting things back, so maybe building the foundations or building the walls. That’s a starting date, and the commencement date, again you have to give prior notice of that, is when you’ve got…they talk about completing the lowest floor slab or 15% of the refurbishing works, not in cost but in terms of actual physical work. So the starting date is different to the commencement date and again the regulation requires you to give notice to the BSR. The reality is that these dates potentially could slip in the project, if you anticipate completing something by this date and it doesn’t, do you have to keep on going back to the Regulator to inform them.
But my understanding is that this element, notifying them at the starting commencement, is after you’ve got your gateway 2 approval. A couple of other general things is principal contractor change control requirements, there is guidance on this. I read Mo’s document and it went into a bit more detail about what is needed in here so I think maybe we can have a look at that and add some general bullet points. Again, what we’re trying to do in this diagram is not necessarily to write down everything, but to give the correct summary headlines and, as Jarek has done for the hyperlinks to enable people to read the government or the HSE. So we only give you links to either the government websites or the HSE, we feel that they’ve got to be the most accurate.
So this change control process comes up to this one here. As far as we understand it there is the opportunity to change things, because maybe the manufacturer has gone bust or actually because you do want to change a product around. But we understand that there is two things notifiable change, there’s a list of what these things notifiable change could be, and they are for example something to do with the change of the process. So the way that you talked about managing change control as a contractor, maybe you change that document, you need to notify the BSR of that. So notify changes seems to be very much about changes to processes and stuff, or it could be a change to a product, but that has exactly the same performance and the specification.
That’s kind of weird thing to say because nothing can be truly equal, but the notifiable change…you can proceed at risk. So the contractor can go, OK, we’re going to change the product or change a process, but you’re allowed to carry out, but you obviously submit that to the BSR and they have a period to say yes, that’s happy, or no. So you are proceeding at risk, but theoretically if you’re sticking within the guidelines of what a notifiable change can be then you shouldn’t fall foul of that. However, if you’re changing something major, like obvious things compartmental lines, staircase width, corridor width, passive or active fire detection or suppression systems, something along those lines is a major change and you cannot proceed at risk until you’ve got approval again. So a major change is pretty much going back to the position you would be when you submit that information to get gateway 2 approval.
One thing I haven’t put in here is what the cost of these things are, is there a fixed fee for a major notifiable? Or again is it a bit like the main submission where there could be hourly rates that are applied to it? So if anyone has got any feedback on some sort of cost matrix so that clients, contractors, can build that in to their program. And as we get through to the end a couple more questions here are to do with the need for as-built information. And now from an architectural point of view, for example, or M&E, that’s obviously very different to what some people used to do in terms of maybe pushing final record because we haven’t gone to inspect everything that’s been built and measured everything to make sure it’s been built as per our drawings. So that’s a bit of an unknown purely from an architectural point of view, how does the architect go and check that the version of the drawings that they have is the as-built information?
Normally we would asks the contractor to mark up any known changes that we hadn’t been notified of before. Theoretically if something has changed from submission 2 they should go through the change procedure, there may be a variation to amend something. And therefore we would update our Revit model and so when you get to the end of gateway 2 what we have on our records should be the as-built. So in one way there shouldn’t really be a major issue, but I’m just conscious that at the moment we ask specialist contractors is our drawings as you built it, and they say yes, but we might turn up and have a look onsite and something has changed. So, that kind of inspection role that sometimes appointments used to have, maybe we need to bring some of that back in. So that will be quite interesting to see what people’s experience of that is.
Bringing that building regulation 38 fire safety information, which is not a new thing, it's something that's always been there. But obviously George mentioned about the processes that they're putting in place at Active Plan and I think there is another gentleman from a housing association who talked about how they’re looking to compile all of that relevant information. Obviously we asked the question whether Regulation 38 is actually based on that list above as well. And there is this need from a contractor point to do with things like mandatory occurrence reporting, so something that doesn’t go right, that reporting is required. So people reference things like the airline industry where it you notice something wrong or you did something wrong you have a 10 day period where you can report that you’ve done something wrong and you don’t get prosecuted or anything.
But, it could be like loo, the control button on my airplane was eroded so I didn’t see it properly. And the aim of that no blame culture within that short period, the idea is that people report those things more frequently and therefore improve, to make sure that that knob that they had to use on the airplane is better painted or finished so that it doesn’t rub off and you might need a little different colour. So that’s a kind of behavioural change that the building safety regulation and the competency has added, it’s not about just skills, knowledge and experience, it’s behavioural change as well. So that’s quite an interesting big one. So simply speaking, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve designed the building with all the relevant parties which is a procurement difference to what is now predominant.
We submit that to the approval, get it approved, there are processes for changing theoretically, ideally you don’t want to do it if you don’t need to. And at the end of the building you’re able to submit for that to get the gateway 3. So the Building Safety Regulator will agree with the contractor inspection dates, as they would do normally now, or maybe even un-notified inspections as well. And so all of that comes together, then we get to gateway 3 and our understanding is that practical completion, we’ve got to apply for the completion certificate which could take 12 weeks, I’m not 100% sure if that’s right, or whether it’s 8 weeks now, I’ve seen both written. So again this is about building in these time periods into the programme. I guess one thing we haven’t put in here, Jarek, is just making sure we all understand what we need to submit. My understanding is this sort of safety case, all of the key building information list that we talked about above.
Again in Mo’s document there were some really useful bullet points about you had to write a statement to say yes, as the client and the team you have had competent people do everything as per the document and drawings and stuff. So I think we can expand on this from Mo’s submission and feedback. But ultimately my understanding is that you’re kind of reconfirming that you’ve followed all of the processes that are required to be followed in gateway 2. You’re confirming that everything has been built as per the documents that you had already submitted and got approval through the gateway 2 process and in doing so you get practical completion and you apply for the completion certificate. Once you’ve got that completion certificate then the high-risk building can be registered with the BSR.
Again, we had a period of 3 weeks previously, and I don’t know if that’s changed, but the key thing is only when you’ve got that certificate or registered the building can you then occupy it. So we’ve tried to put that in this workflow here, we’ve got area 3 completion, building project completion, register the HRB with the BSR and then it can be occupied. That’s quite important in terms of clients thinking, oh, we got practical completion in the old days…we might have had some snags that we want to finish etc., or there is a bit of information left that we’ll send next week, obviously all of that cannot happen anymore. And we’ve also got the added sort of stage in terms of the registration, so as far as we understand it at the moment it could be 15 weeks, that’s nearly 4 months.
My understanding is you don’t have to wait until the last day to submit information, you can submit it in smaller chunks I guess. Because theoretically the foundation designs and the structural frame information will be long solidified and completed before you get to the end of the project because the superstructure would have gone up. So that information should be able to be confirmed, collated and submitted way before the end of the project. However things like the commissioning of the fire alarm system or emergency lighting, lift, all of that kind of stuff will obviously have to happen quite close to the end. So again, that kind of phase submission can occur to stop having to finish a project and wait potentially 4 months before you can occupy it.
That again is something that the client and everyone needs to be aware of, if you’re selling private flats you can’t say to the owners oh, you can move in on PC day because actually they’ve got to wait another 4 more months. So that’s quite a huge difference to I guess what currently happens at the moment. And finally our understanding is that it has to be re-certified every 5 years and therefore you come back to that earlier thing that Jarek had about maintaining that (actually you’ve got some additional ones in here as well) information when you’re going back to the model, the EIRs, the OIRs etc and you’re starting a new project I guess. So keeping that schedule information alive which is all the things that George has talked about in more detail, for example, the Active Plan platform and other methods that people follow.
I think that therefore gets you to the end and you can actually use the building. The defects liability period, I think that’s a new thing, the 30 years and the 15 years. Again, I’m slightly less knowledgeable about that so others will have to input into that. That is currently how we understand the process to give us clearly a number of yellow things in there for us to clarify. But I think what we would like to do is to kind of be almost published version one, maybe after another little session between yourself, Jarek ,and I and any input from the team. I think it's better to get it out there with questions highlighted so people can feedback, like a PDF version of this.
JAREK WITYK Yeah, by the way, it would be more useful if we could get some more comments first and then publish it. I think you covered it all very well, Das. I just wanted to add in the chat I sent a link to this Miro board and a password to it. That will allow you to see and comment without having any account with Miro. So let’s try to demonstrate that: if you select one object and right click you should be able to add a comment. So if you click that, make a comment and then you have to publish, so you have to press the blue arrow at the end otherwise it will not be visible by anyone. If you’re not logged in and you want your contribution, your name to be visible just put your initials or name, otherwise you’re just a visitor. But all of those comment are logged and they don’t disappear.
So let me just try to show you if a I turn them on, you should be able to see a few more pointers appearing on your screen. But there’s quite a lot of resolved comments and they don’t disappear, so we can track your input. So all of the comments are tracked and then if I go show resolved you’ll then see all of those dashes, so people made comments. So that will be quite useful if you did it online, but if you prefer to do it any other way, text message, email or whatever that will be handy. Any comments and input you can provide that will make this workflow much better and help everyone.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ So that’s kind of where we’re at the moment, I don’t know if anybody has got any initial things. I think the key thing that we want to do is to get the critical bits of headline information correct, obviously to get the workflow correct. I think that top part is pretty correct for everything, but because none of us have not gone through the process. But based on the readings that we’ve done and the feedback that top part is correct and then the aim really is to give some high level information on this diagram with the supplementary links to further detailed reading to make a particularly complicated project or a scenario. So we don’t want to get too wordy, but just to enable people to make that initial workflow check and get an understanding and then delve in deeper if need be.
JAREK WITYK I’ll just make one additional comment. If any of you knows about business process modelling notation (BPMN) which we’re using the symbols and that’s how we want to present this workflow. And if you can make comments in regards to whether we’ve used the correct gateways and whether the logic is there that would be appreciated as well.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ If you pan to the left please Jarek, that’s these gateway descriptions. What you’ve done is you’ve used the symbols from that system or method and then you’ve got the kind of thing. It’s just making sure that, the aim here is to include the relevant ones that we have used in a little legend at the top of the workflow so that people aren’t having to guess what that symbol is. But not all of these symbols we’re using or need to use, so we’ve left it to the left hand side for the time being, but hopefully you can pan and read what that symbol means and make sure that makes sense.
JAREK WITYK And just to clarify when Das said legend he didn’t mean me!
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ If people need to digest it I’m sure it will be good. A lot of people have contributed and commented which is fantastic because definitely people who are going to be specifically knowledgeable about it and have gone it in real life experiences. But we don’t also want to keep it virtual for too long because the transitional period ended on the 6th of April. I think we’re looking to, I don’t think any later that next week, Jarek, whatever feedback we have or haven’t got we’ll issue it maybe the middle of next week.I think it’s a nice time because the transitional period has finished and it makes sense to issue it now. So if you could provide any comments in the next couple of days or early next week that would be great, otherwise we’ll use what we have, put some things as tbc and get it out there.
JAREK WITYK Yeah, let’s say if we get comments until next week, Tuesday and we’ll then try to have it ready by the end of the week.
ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ That works for me. And I guess Richard and Jiss, if you could re-share that link to the whole community that would be great because then we’re spreading that out a bit more and getting as much coverage as we can. We’ll get it out and, as with most things, experience will bring clarity, hopefully.