BIM4Housing Design Working Group Meeting 21-02-2024

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Jarek had created a sort of workflow diagram which enables someone to check whether their project goes through the gateways, or not. It was trying to generate a one page crib sheet or work sheet which is quite a useful thing, rather than having to read lots of different documents. But obviously you want to make sure that the facts are correct and the workflow.

GEORGE Jarek Wityk is an electrical engineer, project manager, and he’s done a really good job in mapping out the various different elements, responsibilities and the like. he’s put this on a Miro board and we’re hoping that people can look at it and derive from it but also add to it and improve it.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ (shares screen). This is what Jarek has done. I don’t know how many people have used this Miro board, what he did was to generate this workflow diagram and then a couple of us have commented on it. The idea being that it should be a straightforward thing to navigate around in terms of yes/no, go to this, do that etc. Simply what is the category, for example, does it fall into one of these, if it’s not then the process ends, for example. On the back of this I’ve made some comments about using the government diagrams for measuring the building height, for example. These are diagrams I’ve received by another party, but I now the government documents also have their diagrams which take into account the nuances about measuring a floor that might just be sticking up above the ground level.

I’ve added some comments and so has another gentlemen, but the thinking is that by following these parts people can understand and then if they need to in terms of gateway 1, this is what needs to be done. These are, for example, the planning advice portal for gateway 1, or if you’re going through gateway 2 we’ve tried to put in what we currently understand as being the cost or rates and then obviously we work the way through gateway 2, gateway 3 etc. That’s essentially the workflow diagram that’s created, but it will be useful to make sure that particular triggers or, for example, PAY 251, maybe that figure has changed now. And it’s just making sure where we’re trying to capture the most up-to-date information and knowledge in this.

Jarek did a similar thing for a different exercise, but he managed to get it all on to an A3 piece of paper and that’s the aim of this. I can share the link again and we can ask Jarek to share it again, but that’s one thing we wanted to share across the community and make sure that everyone is happy with it. So that would be one tangible output.

BEN BLACKWOOD It is 251 as of a couple of days ago. I’ve been doing a similar survey internally on the same topic bit from a slightly different angle, but something we’ve been debating internally and we haven’t been able to agree in is say, for a new build, whether it’s an HRB or not it’s fairly clear what the process is. But what we have, and a lot of developers will have this too, is you have an HRB and then you have a retail unit on the ground floor and it’s a separate compartment and you can only access it from outside, therefore it’s a separate building as is defined in the guidance. So therefore imagine you were going to do a Cat B fitout of that retail unit, it wouldn’t be a gateway 2 application because it’s only a retail space, it doesn’t meet the threshold of being an HRB.

However, we have a few nuances to that: if you want to make some changes to compartmentation or introduce some ductwork that goes through the HRB, does it then qualify and make it a gateway 2 application? That’s something that’s going to be applicable to a lot of people and there’s definitely a 50/50 in terms of two camps. I’ve even got two London boroughs at the moment with completely opposing opinions on this.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ I think you make a really good point about these nuances in terms of compartment building etc. I know there is a session on Friday asking for people who have submitted applications. I listened to a couple of HSE webinars from the senior people, but they seem to be saying in their webinars that they’re open for people to submit scenarios. They’re open to people discussing the process that people need to go through, obviously not the answer to the question that they’ve raised. What you’re talking about is a question about the process and the relevancy of it and we’ve got a similar thing looking for a local authority and they’ve got a high-risk building. But they can only do the works in bits depending on when the property becomes vacant, or if it’s a leaseholder it’s up to them. So you end up with this patchwork quilt of works to a facade…it may be the internal lining because of a listed building, but how do you go about doing that?

Do you have to put an application in every single time and wait 12 weeks for every single flat that comes up? Or we’re talking about maybe talking to them about getting some sort of design approval guide which if followed to the tee will they be happy to sign it off for the whole building or the different scenarios. I don’t know the answer to your question, I know in the government guidance that I saw they had a number of different diagrams about similar kind of things that you are talking about where you had a couple of blocks fixed at the ground floor, or car parks and links and stuff.

BEN BLACKWOOD I think that guidance, it’s one of the guidance notes that’s actually really good and clear, it’s more the nuances within that. Taking that guidance as read, there’s not really any dispute about that, it’s more about what’s not there: does fitting out a commercial unit and connecting to the fire alarm of the HRB then make it higher-risk work? In my view if you’re not changing the principles that are established within the information that’s submitted as part of the HRB application, then I don’t think it is, but if you introduce some ductwork or a new entrance that effects the HRB, then it would be. This is a real problem, say a Pret A Manger…they’re going into a tall building and then a fitout company, they’re used to doing shop fitting and then you say to them you need to do a gateway 2 application and they say we don’t know what that is, we’re going to go somewhere else. That’s basically what’s happening at the moment.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ If you’re available that session on Friday may be quite useful because other people might have already done it, but listening to the webinar from the HSE I think they said that they had no applications yet because everyone is either trying to either do things quickly before the April deadline, or are just waiting to get some more guidance in terms of their staircase or redesigning or whatever.

BEN BLACKWOOD I did one on Monday, so it may be one of the first.

MO FISHER I’ve just put a link in the chat so that you’ve got the contact of the Building Safety Regulator, that’s a portal question system that you can ask any question. I’ve used it on a number of occasions, I haven’t got answers back on all of them, but some of them I have and it’s quite useful. Just to be wary once you submit the question you get an email back saying thank you for the question, but it doesn’t let you know what your question was, so you have to take a screenshot before. But it’s useful, they’ve come back with a couple of queries that we’ve had on process and it’s ironed it out, so I’d encourage people to use it. And coming back to the diagrams, I did find them useful, there’s two sets of diagrams, one for design and construction phase and one for occupation phase. So you have to be careful which set you’re looking at because the occupational are very different to the design because it’s to do with handover. So you can actually be designing a building that is an HRB, but then it’s considered an independent building at a later stage that doesn’t need to be registered as an HRB. So it’s very confusing, but I just focus on the design and construction diagram and if we get any questions from clients whether on not they need to register it, then we direct them to the other.

But the example that’s been given with a shop, my understanding was any building work that requires a building application to an HRB has to then be submitted to the BSR and then follow that procedure. And that would be particularly if it’s at the stage of construction, it’s all at the same stage, you’re not talking about a fitout after the building has been handed over.

BEN BLACKWOOD Most of these, it tends to be well after the building is all done and handed over and usually these are HRBs that were constructed under the old regime and then they’ve laid empty for a while and in accordance with that guidance note you were referring to they’re deemed a separate building and a fitter or contractor is coming along to do some work in there. I think what’s a good idea is we submit that scenario onto the portal and see what they come back with.

MO FISHER Yes…but without digressing the scenario you’ve explained I think that needs to be part of the construction control plan. So if you’re saying this isn’t being fitted out you have to put it to the BSR what’s been put in place to manage that. So if a client says we don’t know what the unit is going to be used for and all of a sudden you’ve got mechanical ventilation for a cafe going in, does that then significantly effect the safety of the rest of the building, has it been considered compartmentation structure, all of the above. The interesting thing on that is who is the principal designer for building regs because if the principal designer is responsible for the whole building, who is the responsible for the later works? But what you’ve described could potentially also form a staged application. That’s very muddied, what stage application is, but you could look at it as everything above is the main application and the stage application is then the works that follow on.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ I think I’ve seen one of the sets of diagrams, and maybe not the other set that you referred to. If you’re able to share the links that would be useful. That session on Friday, I think that might be a good place to start in terms of these sort of scenarios and what we’re personally trying to do with the local authority is at the moment I’m trying to check that I’ve got the question that they want to ask and the process that they want to follow correct. So I’ve sent a draft to them to then share with the Regulator to see what their response is because they’re meant to be able to help us and they need to help different parties understand the scenarios, then how we address the requirements is a different matter.

GEORGE I’ll explain what Friday is, it came out of a LinkedIn post about 3-4 weeks ago where somebody was posting about the experience that they were having in terms of making a gateway submission through Building Control, and how Building Control was dealing with it. It seemed to be very pertinent to what we were doing, so we’ve set up a Teams workshop on Friday, we’ve had a strong response, I think we’ve got 80-90 people already signed up to it. That will probably drop to 40, but it’s still very high and we’ve got a lot of clients coming onto that. We've got a couple of Building Control specialists on it as well, so that might be something that you’d find useful. Everybody is learning at the moment and this type of collaborative way of doing it is critical. Das, I think that some new people have joined so do you want to show the cheat sheet or the reference document that we’ve been working on? Ana, you're very process driven, have you seen what we’re talking about here?

ANA MATIC No, I’m not part of your Miro board.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ It was the one that Jarek set up, I’ll just send the link he shared with me, I think you can join in as a guest. After this call I’ll resend it…and make sure all the team members here gets it and Jarek can help answer queries. What Jarek had done (shares screen) was this, to create the workflow diagram for somebody to be able to follow the yes, the no, see whether it needs to be registered or whether it applies. We’ve tried to put in some guidance diagrams, these are not the government ones so we need to replace them or link to them so people can evaluate whether their building falls into the category, or not. Then he’s put in information to do with the gateways and there are various links that I’d suggested you can go through to get advice for the gateway 1 planning applications or advice from them. We're just trying to make sure that it’s as simple as possible, but also captures the key gates or checks you have to go through.

I guess it’s evolving because the information or guidance is evolving, but what Jarek aimed to do was create an A3 or A4 one page, like a PDF version of this that people can share I guess that can be audited and checked with any other information that might come through, like a version control of it. It’s something that will be useful because for most people a little flow diagram is quite an easy way to assimilate or get through all the regulations in an easy manner. The other thing George alluded to is these crib sheets, 4 or 5 pages that I might have shared before, but what I’ve tried to do here, sort of part of something I was presenting internally, is just to make a crib sheet which I’d like some input on to make sure that I’ve got the facts right so that we can then format this into the standard BIM4Housing format and share with the wider community, again keeping a version control.

I won’t go through this line by line, but as far as I understand I’ve tried to assimilate the key components of various Acts that have come in. I’ve tried to condense, the yellow are new things that I’ve added having listened to, for example, the HSE webinar. The information that I’m aware of in terms of gateway 1, again that link to where you’re meant to be able to get advice, the current timelines in terms of approvals or processing, the major changes, the notifiable changes etc. In terms of looking at things which are to do with works to existing high-risk buildings, so if you’re doing refurbishments to facades etc. This may come out of date quite quickly because this slide was looking at what would you have to do to demonstrate that you’ve commenced on-site before this April coming, so very soon part of this slide will be redundant.

I saw recently there was discussions about staircases and some guidance that’s come out both from Michael Gove, but also from recommendations from the Fire Brigade which people are debating about, whether it was clear or not. One gentleman was saying that ultimately the requirements require you to assess the risks, so whether the guidance says you must have two evacuation lifts or not, you’ve got to be happy that you’ve followed the risks: you’ve looked at the users in the building and are happy that they could evacuate at the same time as the Fire Brigade coming in and dealing with the issue. I think a lot of emphasis is clearly on the design team, the strategic team and the risks reviews to either confirm that we want two staircases or not because there does seem to be different conflicting guidance. And then this is regarding the terminology, this is the diagrams that I had extracted which talked about the definition, typically in terms of what we do which is stand alone, individual buildings, rather than having a large podium with multiple different buildings coming off it, for example, which are some of the other diagrams in that document. We can add the links that Mo has sent across to this page so that people can look at whether their project is covered in those diagrams.

And then finally looking at some more things I picked up from the webinar about the process and how do we get to the final completion certificates. And then looking at the competency issues and discussions around principal designer, principal contractor, there is obviously going to be an insurance issue and how do we get to demonstrate our competency. I think I saw an architect on LinkenIn saying we’ve already paid all of these fees and you’re asking us to pay more fees to register to be a PD, for example, under the Building Safety Act. So there’s a little bit of pushback from people so I think this element of competency and insurance is still very new to everyone. This is some of the questions I was just making a note of that we’ve been asked, as I mentioned from the local authority, about how do they go about tackling multiple buildings which have different users i.e. leaseholders and tenants, and how do you go about doing works to potentially a patchwork quilt of works to a facade.

Just simply because of the fact that they don’t own all of the properties, they can’t simply go we’re going to do all of the properties in one go, so those are potential real life scenarios that are coming through and it would be interesting to hear what happens on Friday and through the link that Mo shared in terms of asking questions of the Building Regulator. If it’s OK I’ll share that Powerpoint as well, or PDF is easier for people to comment on, but I think a combination of things that i’ve tried to extract in those crib sheets, ideally they’d go into Jarek’s workflow so that we’re not creating lots of stuff, we’re just creating one concise thing. If that includes government website links or Building Safety Regulator links, they are two sources of information that we should be referring to. So that’s the aim, to make sure that between Jarek’s workflow and my crib sheets we’ve captured what we know to date and that it’s the best advice that we can share to the wider community at the moment. I’m sure other organisations are probably doing similar crib sheets, so it’s really about knowledge sharing and getting something out there to help.

GEORGE Has anybody else, I imagine that other people are doing a similar sort of exercise that Das has been doing. If you’ve got something would you be willing to join in with that so that we can get everybody’s input?

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ It might be useful for us to set a timeline to releasing version one…the end of next month is probably a good a time as any because ultimately that brings in to the beginning of April which is when the commencement deadline for registering projects that are currently live finishes. I’ll share my slides to Jiss and then if you can share that to those in this group and the wider thing and we can ask for feedback within the next couple of weeks, on top of the PDFs. And the same for Jarek’s thing and then maybe me and Jarek could do a little workshop and bring that together and so maybe by the end of March we go here’s what we know, version 1. I think that might help in terms of getting something out there and having a deadline for it.

MO FISHER I’ve got nothing like what Das has done, but once that’s sent out I’m more than happy to comment on it and come back.

ANA MATIC A really amazing diagram on the Miro board. We haven’t got anything that visual, but we are starting to try and define some rules and workflows for our teams and also trying to find where our responsibilities stop and start. I have to say ashamedly only working Excel so far, so I don’t have anything for today, but I will try and catch up with our team who are specifically looking at BSA stuff and to try and share something next time to show what we’re thinking, what we’re struggling with. Projects are very different and in very different stages as well. Thank you for sharing, really impressive.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ I think Jarek has done a great job, he’s clearly very good at workflow diagrams. It’s interesting because you’re right in terms of responsibility, if you keep the fact that we’re in this sort of design group we’ve got to be mindful of advising clients on certain things, but also what is the requirement across the board on all projects from a principal designer under the Building Safety Act because that obviously as a competency thing is required for all projects. So there’s all projects and then there’s the high-risk building projects and at the moment in terms of our practice our view is that we would like to build like when CDM came many years ago, is to be guided by those who are specialising in with the label Building Safety Act PD because they should have the insurance and the guidelines.

I think George, I shared with you that gentleman from Armour & Griffith who is in that PI kind of world, because it would be useful to understand what they’re doing and learn from those who are the specialist, have got the correct insurance etc and then absorb it as we become more competent and able to take that role, which is a similar thing we did for the CDM PD role, for example. That’s our general view. At the moment we don’t have projects which fall into the high-risk buildings, but we are working on projects full stop, so that PD role extends across all projects now. So, I think that would be useful. Previously, Ana, you were working on a project which you’re trying to get to gateway 2 and was doing all of the right things, what happened to that? I think a fire stopping issue and the details, they went bust. They’re the kind of real life scenarios which are really useful.

ANA MATIC That project has gone on hold for other reasons, not necessarily the fire safety issues. We actually got as far as nearly submitting gateway 2 and then some rethinking had to be done. I’ll definitely update you as soon as we know more about what is going on. We’re hoping it’s going to come back online, we haven’t submitted it, basically.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ (referring to MIKE SMITH’s chat comment ‘we’ve got a Miro Board that we have been developing so great to collaborate’). I guess if you’re happy to share that on this we can then cross-share Miro boards with Jarek and then maybe come together. If I put a timeline in terms of two weeks to get comments back that gives us maybe a couple of more weeks to bring it together and polish it up.

I think the only other one, George, was whether going back a number of months to the original 4 questions that we had in terms of asking the wider community. I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to share them and have got any thoughts, or do we need to just re-share that to see whether a) the questions are relevant? I suspect they are because they were fairly high level questions.

RICHARD We did send then out and we got some response back which Jiss sent through to you, I think. We’ve not had anything since. To be fair the working group meetings have been very busy, so I can understand why that happened, we’ve had a lot of stuff going on over the last few months. We’re happy to obviously put that out again. We do find that we don’t always get a response when we just send an email out, people often don’t see the email. So I’m wondering if you’d be better off doing a workshop kind of thing and getting a couple of people from each working group and thrash it out during the meeting.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ No, agreed, I guess lots of emails coming to everyone, so if we do dedicate a thing and get even if it’s one person from the six different groups. It may be one or two bullet points that we generate per question…

RICHARD It’s a start, and then you can do it again. It’s very difficult to get anything actually finished, nothing is ever finished in this realm. And then also once you’ve done that, you’ve got a lot of people who wanted to come to the meeting but couldn’t, and they then are engaged and you’ll get responses back from them.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ That’s what I’m conscious of in terms of getting something out, output, it’s certainly not going to be finished because everyone’s learning still, but if it’s 90% accurate with 10% errors that’s, in a way, great because then those things can be flushed out. If you want to share any feedback you’ve had that would be great and then I could either include that or exclude that from my little 5-6 crib sheet thing in the Powerpoint that I just shared and then we can share that with this team and the wider team again. If anyone can come back in the next couple of weeks, and it doesn’t matter necessarily because well then still issue it and then people can react to it and say you’ve got it wrong or I actually didn’t realise that or here’s another link, here’s our experience.

So it’s that formal issue that gets people going in terms of responding. Happy to be involved in that, Richard, in terms of that little working group to discuss the 4 questions and maybe in a couple of weeks to go through the 2 Miro boards and maybe my crib sheet in terms of finalising a workflow diagram.

RICHARD Absolutely, leave that with us and we’ll get back to you on the dates and stuff.

GEORGE I’ve got something to explain what we’ve been doing within Active Plan. We’ve been working with Origin and John Morrow, but also other clients as well, to look at what information is actually auditable that needs to be provided and what’s essential. And one way of doing that was to look at things through the prism of Regulation 38 and also Regulation 7. These are things that we’re told we need information on as far as safety critical assets and obviously the Regulation 38 thing, what becomes significant for the client or the responsible person in particular. This is the new legislation that came in in August, a lot of clients haven’t yet become familiar with it, but basically the client has got to expressly confirm that they’ve received the information that is sufficient for them to understand and operate and maintain the building.

That’s such a broad scope, that’s a legal requirement now, and it’s not hugely well defined. So we’ve been drilling into Regulation 38 and related references to try and come up with something that’s definitive. The other aspect of this is the role of the principal designer and principal contractor and again in the legislation you can see there that they have to confirm, first of all, that they’ve provided everything that’s needed (and again, what does that mean?) and also that they’ve received notice from the responsible person acknowledging receipt of the information. I think that’s quite a strong responsibility. We’ve looked at what is in the Act in terms of what the basic information is and also looking at things from a point of view of the, effectively, systems that you have to ensure that you’ve got the information on. It’s fair to say that of all the conversations that we’ve been having with client organisations, they never get this in a complete format, even though this isn’t new, this is something that’s been in place for almost 20 years, but in practice this information is very fragmented.

So one of the things we’ve been doing is going through Regulation 38 and also BS9999 to look at what information is needed for the different systems and the elements in the systems and then using this as a mechanism to be able to validate whether that information has actually been provided or not. What we’re trying to get to is a situation where we can be definitive and also that’s from Regulation 38 and BS9999, but what we’ve done here is integrating this with what’s coming through from BSRIA which is the statutory compliance checklist, largely for M&E because that’s what BSRIA is about. And we’ve also tried to tie it back to the clauses in the act so that we can identify what is essential information and what isn’t. We’ve also started to build this as a standard register of systems because one of the challenges is that everybody’s O&Ms are structured differently, and if we can have things properly referenced then we stand a much better chance. And then if we can define Uniclass codes against things it means that we’re in a better position.

We can also then look at what documentation is required and we can build this into a set of information requirements which can then be used to test to see whether the information has actually been handed over. I can’t see any other way of a responsible person or a client saying that they’ve received what they need. And then this goes through the checklist of questions, so we are looking at how best to organise that. I’m wondering whether people are interested in this…we tried to do this in a very methodical, structured way. If you’re interested in joining us on that journey we’re very interested in that.

JOHN MORROW I’m just going to add to that, retrieving information in a timely manner is like pulling teeth and what we’ve found is that the templates and those methodical checklists that we use, we put them in to our contracts on our AFLs to make it a legal requirement for them to provide that information prior to PC happening. And even then it’s still very difficult because obviously there is a lot of information to scrutinise and go through and the reality of it is that we’re furnished with the majority of this information literally days before practical completion. So we’re just trying to force them to gather the information, share it and allow us time to scrutinise it.

GEORGE Definitely, it needs to be progressive. If you’re interested in getting involved in our thinking on that then put your name in the chat and we’ll invite you. I think it’s particularly relevant for people that are looking to provide the principal designer role because it’s a tangible way that you can demonstrate that the project has actually complied. And really we shouldn’t be getting to a situation which John is saying there, if the principal designer is in control of that position we shouldn’t be getting to a situation where all of that information is dumped on the client at almost handover and then they’ve got a huge job to actually pull it all together. It’s also fair to say that construction companies themselves are exposed because at the end of the day most of this information is actually going to be provided by the specialist subcontractors who have installed things and they need a mechanism to ensure that they’ve received what they need. It’s all so wooly, it seems to me.

MO FISHER Yeah, I agree, it’s very wooly. I think the principal designer building regs, the onus on that is to comply with the functional requirements of building regs. So the level of information that you need to demonstrate that, nobody knows, we don’t know if it’s a light touch, if it is just you tick a box saying yes, we agree the design and strategies perform that functional requirement. Or do you need to dig deep because there are certainly going to be elements where you need to provide commissioning etc to show that smoke control or something that like complies. But is the principal designer just then responsible for attaining that information or making the client aware that that information is needed. So it is all wooly and we’re only going to know as we go along and submit applications and see what comes out of the wash.

GEORGE That’s interesting, Mo. I absolutely agree that that’s something that everybody is still navigating at the moment. Do you think it’s possible that the scope of the principal designer’s responsibility maybe only to inform that something is needed, rather than say has it been provided?

MO FISHER I think it’s possibly going to be a bit of both and it depends what it is because you’ve got different consultants etc. Would a PD have to be competent enough to know every bit of information that a structural engineer needs to provide? Or are you relying on the competence of the structural engineer to provide the right information? But you could definitely have a minimum of drawing structural calculations etc. I just don’t think that that role should be providing an exhaustive list because the BSR might actually request information that no one has thought about.

GEORGE The other question I would have is does the principal designer’s role or responsibility extend beyond handover?

MO FISHER No, I would say. I think the principal designer is there to plan, manage and monitor, that’s the terminology that they use during the construction phase. And at handover I would say that then those responsibilities go to the accountable person because they are then in ownership of the building.

GEORGE But if the information proves to be missing in a year’s time then…

MO FISHER It can’t be, the BSR need to be satisfied that the amount of information that’s been provided is enough for them to handover that building.

GEORGE So you’re saying the BSR, probably Building Control who could be an independent, the fact that they’ve accepted the…I don’t think they are doing that though, they wouldn’t confirm that everything has been provided. I think they leave it open.

MO FISHER That’s why the statement for compliance against the building regulations is there, that’s again my understanding. If, for example, it turns out…just say it turned out that data sheets weren’t provided for smoke detectors or something like that. I’m trying to think of an example where you’re a year later, that wouldn’t have affected the functional requirements and the building being deemed safe at handover under the functional requirements of the building regulations.

GEORGE But if, for example, not so much the data sheets, but if there were no compartmentation drawings…

MO FISHER My understanding is it wouldn’t be handed over. The building control application would need to cover those elements, and we’re not just talking about fire and structure anymore, it’s all the approved documents. I think this is all in place so we won’t ever see that scenario of someone saying we haven’t got compartmentation plans, that would have been formed firstly by the fire engineer with the fire strategy backed up by architectural design intent. And that’s possibly all you need unless you’ve got a specialist subcontractor that then produces drawing for their own purpose to demonstrate that they’re complying with that compartmentation. I could be wrong, but it’s how I see it.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ I guess if you look at what the CDM role is, it’s that kind of orchestral reference where you can’t know everything, but it’s the case of making sure that you’ve asked a) the right competent people to be involved in the project in the first place and then you’re ensuring where your checklists and stuff come in to their own, it’s the ability to systematically…Ultimately the PD has sort of become the building control that normally you’d go to a building control approved inspector and say here is this information, can you have a look at it, let us know if you’re missing something. They’ll obviously flip that around completely saying you’ve got to prove that you’ve met all of the things, so the PD sort of becomes essentially a building control game where you provide me this information, here is our checklist to make sure that we as a team have dealt with all of these different parts of it.

Which then if you’ve got that checklist, in a similar way to the CDM PD, there are various templates to make sure that you go through all of the significant hazards you could have on a site. So you work your way through and make sure you haven’t missed anything, in the same way I guess the PD and team would have to go through a similar checklist, including like your one, and then satisfy themselves. And then the responsible person goes, OK, I appreciate you’ve gone through all of these, you think you’ve done everything, and it’s that chain where you’re relying on the structures, the M&E to be competent and have done all of the finite calculation reviews and stuff which the PD cannot ever possibly have all of the expertise on.

So as long as the chain is strong and the competence of the chain is strong you go through your checklist and say al of the building reg things are met, here is the evidence, over to you. The responsible person can then go yeah, I’m happy I’ve seen that and then everyone goes forward. In my mind the PD is acting as what would have been an approved inspector, but working obviously with the team and checklist like you do in CDM to make sure that all the bases are covered. Obviously there could be weak links, but that’s going to be everywhere unfortunately.

GEORGE I agree. I think one of the other things that we could maybe as a community help with is actually defining some of those scenarios that you were suggesting because if we could do that then at least people have got…it won’t be extensive, but it’s a way that people can say, does that make sense?

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Yes. I think that people who are directly involved in the projects, similar to the CDM advice anyway, are best placed because they understand changes and dynamics of the project first hand. But it’s a whole other level of, the insurance world that we’ve got to get our heads around, but also then actually what is it that the role is because from the recording that I watched that you chaired with me of the advisory group one, the lady who talked about what’s in the PAS and what’s in the guidance for competent people is not that clear either, so there is clearly grey areas that we’re all trying to figure out.

BEN BLACKWOOD Just to amplify your point. We’re in a privileged position where we are the freeholder, the developer, the construction manager and the responsible person. So we’ve been operating this sort of handover process for 18 months now trying to do the gateway 3 process as we go. I represent the client and I’m the gatekeeper of the information and the way we found this handover process to work most effectively is we do reviews for the last sort of 6 months before handover, we do it monthly. I say to the construction manager unless you tell me something is ready I’m not looking at it, but I’m happy to look at things that are incomplete, but you have to tell me what is incomplete.

And I get them to fill out a tracker which we have that basically follows the principles of the golden thread and Regulation 38 of agreed structure that the responsible person has agreed with the construction manager so that they can find the information afterwards. And we populate everything and hyperlink it all through and we go through that monthly to just check off, there’s loads of things 6 months before the completion of the building you can get at least 50% of it checked off and banked. And so the day before handover you are not getting this grand-slam of having to check everything, you’re just checking the last 5%. That seems to work quite well.

GEORGE I absolutely agree, I’d be very interested in comparing notes on that with you because that’s exactly what we need to do because all too often everybody leaves it until the end.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ There is also the post that the registration process which is going to be interesting to see how long, I think they’re taking about 3 weeks when they do register the building.

BEN BLACKWOOD We have had some issues with that. Obviously prior to the 1st of October we registered all of the occupied buildings and did all the KBI and what not. That was a body of work, but nevertheless it’s done, but now, someone just offered me one as we were talking that we need to go and register. They’re saying, right, this building is just about ready to handover so we’ve got to then simultaneously check all of the information, register the building, upload the KBI. And we’ve had a few where we’ve gone to register the building and the BSR has asked is the building occupied, and we said no, obviously, because we haven’t registered it yet and they’ve rejected our application on that basis. So we have to say, we put in the comments a caveat that people are ready to move in and then it tends to go through. But particularly for social housing where you’ve got people ready to move in the next day and then the BSR takes 3 weeks to get back to you approving your registration it’s a bit of a problem so that process is still a bit sticky at the moment.

JOHN MORROW In regards to that process, it’s especially difficult collating that Regulation 38 items on Section 106 schemes where we’ve come to the table quite late in the construction phase. But we do utilise what we call a Regulation 38 tracking document to record the gathering of information and the review and the close-out, getting as much done as we can when we get it. And that’s the only way we found that we can sort of audit that review process to make sure that everything is in order at PC. But it is like pulling teeth, even to the point that we put together a discussion document as to what Regulation 38 is and where it came from because a number of developers contractors we work with thinks it’s an Origin task and requirement, as opposed to one of conversation about compliance. Even now we still have that conversation and there is a certain reluctance of them to provide that information in a timely manner which breaks my heart, to be fair.

BEN BLACKWOOD We found you have to a little bit thick headed with all of that, but now that we’ve got it into a rhythm we use a tracking document as well. And we’ve got Asite, we use that as the database that sits behind it, everything is backed into it with hyperlinks, dynamic links.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ In terms of where you’re registered existing buildings, is what you’re having to produce to register…is it correct to assume that that is essentially the same as what we’d have to submit for a project that’s completing? Or is it very different?

BEN BLACKWOOD It’s basically the same.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ And am I correct in thinking that the Building Safety Regulator hasn’t issued this is the checklist of things to submit, you’ve got to be happy your self etc and that’s why things like the Regulation 38 is a good place to start from or work to? It would be useful if it’s possible to share the headings of whatever you submitted. I’m not fully versed on it, but I think there are guidance as to what a safety case needs to contain/

JOHN MORROW We’ve got a draught template that we use for the gathering of that information. In our experience it’s at a level greater than the core components that we currently cover within a Regulation 38 exercise. I’d be happy to share that with everybody.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ Just because for me, I’m a visual person and if I can see a set of folders and see what needs to be, for me it’s easier to visualise it than read it.

JOHN MORROW It’s a lot easier, especially where we’re working across teams within the organisation itself. And one thing that’s become apparent is some of the terminology, even between the teams. It helps give us clarity.

BEN BLACKWOOD There’s an easy way to cut through that, the three of us have just said we do basically the same thing and we’ve independently come up with the same solution which is clearly a standard format tracker which backs into Regulation 38 and in the fullness of time the golden thread. But then the government portal is so poorly designed that you have to retype all of this information. I was having a moan at the BSR just before Christmas and saying we all have this in the same format, if you just gave us your template and we’ll all just use it, it’s fine and then we can just give it to you. But making people retype everything is just an irresponsible waste of people’s time.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ What is that? Is that to upload information into register…give me an example.

BEN BLACKWOOD The KBI (Key Building Information), for example, we have all of that and we’ve got in various trackers and lots of other people on this call would have it in their own trackers, probably not too dissimilar. I counted up the other day, over the last few weeks we’ve filled out 17,500 text boxes on the BSR portals with the same information. The gateway process is kind of similar, making people retype information doesn’t help anyone and it introduces mistakes and some of the terminology on the KBI website is a bit poor. And if there was just a template that they gave to people it would make everyone’s lives so much easier.

GEORGE In essence, Ben, to some extent that’s what we’re trying to do. The fact is that the Regulator, the government generally, they don’t want to explicitly tell you what to do because they don’t want to take on that responsibility. So what we’re trying to do, just in terms of the Regulation 38 checklist you’re talking about, we’ve pulled together 10 so, I’ve seen Joh’s checklist and it’s excellent. Other local authorities or housing associations have got a similar thing, but very different, either not as detailed or whatever. I think that needs to be rationalised in some way because we need to be able to tell the construction supply chain what good looks like. I absolutely agree with you, so maybe we pick up on that.

JOHN MORROW It would be great to get that consistency because I must admit our motivation was purely selfish to gather the information so we had piece of mind and certainly to ease the dialogue we had with other teams post-handover. I’ve had numerous crises of confidence in the respect that are we over doing it, and then you sit back and review it again, I really don’t think we are. It’s a tough one, but as you say a consistency across the board and communicating that to all the relevant parties.

GEORGE It’s also the method of doing these things. I was talking with another big developer recently and he was saying that the process that he’s implemented (and he’s been doing this for many years) is a requirement…he said the problem is in getting fire doors tested, for example. So the fire door installation information, it then needs to be inspected 6 months later. So he’s requiring, rather than it being inspected 6 months after it’s been handed over, he’s built into their method is that it ought to be inspected at the same time as it’s installed.

JOHN MORROW Yeah, that’s exactly what we do and that’s a key element that we have a review during the construction phase, during the installation phase and then all of the checks and balances to follow. Because we’ve had a number of schemes where part of the pre-occupation FRA process, we reviewed the fire doors and we found numerous faults and serious, serious issues with installs. And that’s a mandatory practice now on all of our schemes, Section 106 or land-led, doesn’t matter.

GEORGE So he’s been castigated by his development team saying you're making it so our cost is…we’re asking for things that are more expensive than other developers are. But his argument, quite rightly, is that yeah, but we’ve got to do it anyway, why wait 6 months.

JOHN MORROW It is more problematic to deal with it at that point than it is than to catch it as it’s happening. The hard conversations I’ve had, I’m fortunate my group director is fully supportive of the approach that we take, but I have found that some project managers even, they just see it as an encumbrance to the delivery of the scheme. That it’s me being anal about the whole process and wanting to capture everything. And the conversations I’ve had with this, I said fine, if we move forward without these checks and balances you do realise that responsibility for this and fallout for this will land at your feet. And then suddenly, oh, OK, but it is a constant fight to get that. But the fire door issues, we have dedicated fire surveyors and they pick that up during the construction phase in addition to clerk of works.

MO FISHER I’ve just sent a link which is related to this discussion that sets out the documents that you need to prepare at various stages. So as a minimum the headings in here is what you’d be looking at submitting for Building Control, certification stage, so that link is quite handy and it also describes what some of the information needs to contain, for example, the scale of a site plan etc.

ANDREW DE SILVA ‘DAS’ I’ll share the PDF copy of the slides that I did. If I get that and some of these links to Jiss, Richard and George. I know you’ve got the wider mailing list. I’ll try and format it in a sensible sort of wording and then that can be shared to the whole groups, rather than just in this meeting.

CHAT

[11:14] Fisher, Mo

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/contact-the-building-safety-regulator

[11:20] Andrew de Silva ‘Das’

Fisher, Mo - could you share the links to the different diagrams please?

[11:21] Paul White

An HRB is a high-rise residential structure: