The Building Safety Act (BSA) has been called the most radical change to Building Regulation in the UK since the 1950’s. What is it going to mean to the Lighting Industry? The Light Review spoke to Richard Hayes of 42 Partners and asked him to walk us through the new legislative landscape.
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TLR: But Richard; surely, the new Building Safety regulations only apply to High-Risk buildings?
RH: Wrong, I’m afraid. The new measures apply to all construction work. True, there are extra measures for High Risk Buildings, but the general provisions apply to ALL construction.
TLR: So who within the project design team is affected?
RH: Everyone who is involved in working on, designing, installing and the maintenance of any construction project is affected by The Building Safety Act. All individuals and organisations must now be competent to ensure compliance with the Building Regulations across all sectors of the construction industry, from the smallest development to the largest multi-story high-rise building
TLR: How are we defining ‘competence’?
RH: This is where it gets awkward. Various existing Acts of Parliament and parts of this new Act define competence as possessing the appropriate “skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours” . All individuals engaged in design, construction, refurbishment, and maintenance work must demonstrate competence in their respective roles.
TLR: And how are we expected to ‘prove’ that we possess such competence. What does this mean for the Lighting Industry?
RH: The most obvious implications – and one might say the most onerous – relate to the supply chain for Emergency Lighting. I don’t believe that the Industry is ready to ensure that all lighting designers and all client-facing and internal sales – or technical – personnel are competent. After all, how many specifiers just rely on manufacturers, and how many sales people then just use a lighting design program to place sufficient fixtures to cover an open area? Applying a computer program hardly constitutes professional competence – surely?
And what about signage; system integrity; installation commissioning. What happens at handover and the training of end users? And what about testing . . . what about . . . what about . . . what about . . . the questions keep coming.
Under the BSA everyone involved has a duty to ensure that the building is safe and can be operated safely throughout its life. And everyone involved needs to be able to demonstrate that they are competent to give advice, carry out design, or in any way assist. Any advice, however loosely given, counts as professional advice in the terms of the BSA.
TLR: To tell the truth, it feels like the lighting Industry been “getting away with this” for years.
RH: And now its time to sharpen up our act. This won’t just blow over and we’ll be back to business as normal in a couple of years.
TLR: This isn’t something that individual manufacturers or design consultancies can do alone. We’ll need an industry-wide response.
RH: I sincerely hope that this marks a watershed moment and that all sectors of the industry get behind this and push for training and knowledge dispersal and that we get behind Schemes that assist in providing routes to competence, otherwise we might well be looking at another disaster that could have been prevented.
We must look to SLL and CIBSE; the LIA and ICEL; ILP – even the ECA to pull together to come up with a joined-up solution. This won’t be a time to fight individual corners. This needs to be more than a money-spinning certificate factory. The industry needs everyone’s expertise and guidance in establishing routes to competence – and getting them in place and available as soon as possible. A
And don’t forget, this is happening NOW. Every design scheme for every project currently underway falls within BSA.
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Taken from the GOV.UK website about The Building Safety Act:
What the Act means for the built environment industry
- The Act will create a clear, proportionate framework for the design, construction, and management of safer, high-quality homes in the years to come.
- It will strengthen the construction products regulatory regime, with new requirements to make sure all construction products on the UK market are safe for their intended use, with a National Regulator for Construction Products to monitor and enforce this.
- There will be a new developer tax, and a levy on developers will ensure that industry contribute to setting things right.
- New rights to redress will ensure those responsible for contributing to the building safety crisis are in line for costs to rectify their mistakes.
This is the first in a series of article from The Light Review that will discuss the implications for the Building Safety Act. We’ll be talking to the different players and influencers who make up the industry’s education and training inner circle.
Change needs to happen now. It won’t be easy and it won’t be comfortable. But we can’t afford to wait.
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