Spec Finish

A complex problem has been broken up into its constituent parts and addressed by more than 100 organisations, including FIS, dedicating cumulative thousands of hours to interrogate information and advice and propose better ways of working. With work led by the Industry Response Group (IRG) and the Technical Expert Panel (TEP), the work of these groups and the Building Safety Bill and Fire Safety Bill is coalescing to provide a clear direction of travel addressing the linked issues of competency and compliance. To help structure our efforts and uncover how a number of new initiatives will lead to tangible changes to the way we market performance products, the words we use to describe them and the skill, knowledge, experience and behaviours (SKEB) needed to specify, purchase, supervise, install and maintain them; we have developed and updated a map that starts to identify the initiatives that are linked and give us an idea of where this will lead. It’s about competency A competency steering group and 13working groups were established to address the issue across the supply chain, with one overarching group to coordinate the results and amarket integrity group (MIG) whichwould look specifically at howperformance products were described and their performance verified. The 13 working groups are: • overarching competence body (WG0); • engineers (WG1); • installers (WG2); • fire engineers (WG3); • fire risk assessors (WG4); • fire safety enforcing officers (WG5); • building standards professionals (WG6); • building designers, including architects (WG7); • building safety managers (WG8); • site supervisors (WG9); • project managers (WG10); • procurement professionals (WG11); and • products competence (WG12). The first output from the group is a document called ‘Raising the Bar’, which was presented at the Construction Products Association (CPA) conference in October 2019. (Read the report here: https://tinyurl.com/5n7kf7f5 ) The report represents 12 months’ work by more than 150 organisations from across the construction, built environment, fire safety and owner/manager sectors, which have come together to improve the competence of those procuring, designing, constructing, inspecting, assessing, managing and maintaining higher risk residential buildings (HRRBs). Setting the Bar is the second and final report of the Competency Steering Group (CSG) and is an update of the interim report, Raising the Bar, published in August 2019. (Read the report here: https://tinyurl. com/3pfday4w ) Feeding into this report, for example, is the work we have been involved in from WG12 on products competence; the development of a construction products competence framework, which will help manufacturers define the level of expected competence to specify, procure, supervise and install their products. Based on SKEB it will help ensure the correct products are used alongside all products they interact with to create building systems. Competence framework standard The Built Environment Competence Standard Group (BECS) is the industry-led programme sponsored by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which will deliver an overarching competence framework standard for everyone working on a building. This is intended to be used by key professions and trades including designers, contractors, fire risk assessors, building managers and others in specialist technical or corporate roles. The framework will provide a set of core principles of competence, including leading and managing safety, communicating safety, delivering safety, risk management, regulations and processes, building systems, ethics and fire/life safety. The competence framework was developed as an overarching standard using an iterative and dynamic process called BSI Flex. BSI Flex 8670: Built environment BSI Flex 8670: Built environment, sets out core criteria for building safety and is designed to provide a framework for the development of three new PAS documents Technical Dame Judith Hackitt was clear in her interim report of Building Regulations and Fire Safety that there has been a lack of evidence of compliance and competency, and she was even clearer that the industry needed to address this. Joe Cilia, FIS Technical Director, reports on what has happened since then and questions whether we have a clear road to follow. MAPPING OUTTHE ROAD TO COMPETENCY AND COMPLIANCE 12 www.thefis.org SETTING THE BAR A NEW COMPETENCE REGIME FOR BUILDING A SAFER FUTURE TheFinalReport of theCompetence SteeringGroup forBuilding aSaferFuture October 2020 p ©Construction IndustryCouncil II RAISINGTHEBAR INTERIMREPORT ImprovingCompetence Building aSafer Future SteeringGrouponCompetence forBuilding aSafer Future August2019