Building Safety Alliance

1 Introduction
2 Update 2023 aiming for charity status
3 Special interest working groups
4 Comments
5 Previous overview of organisation
6 Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki
7 External resources

[edit] Introduction

The Building Safety Alliance was established in 2021 to promote culture change and drive competence for those who are managing buildings and are responsible for giving residents safe homes. With representation from many disciplines active in the residential housing sector, the Building Safety Alliance initially worked on implementing the recommendations from Working Group 8 of the Competence Steering Group, which was tasked with developing a competence framework for the building safety manager as per the recommendations in Dame Judith Hackitt's report.

[edit] Update 2023 aiming for charity status

In September 2023 The Building Safety Alliance announced their intention to become a charity, aiming to drive culture change and competence across the occupation phase.

The Building Safety Alliance is a collaborative group of stakeholders from the occupation phase with over 70 declared supporters from a wide range of organisations across the built environment sector. It has since evolved to become the pre-eminent forum for all those organisations providing support, services and products to the occupied residential sector.

Today the group includes owners, residents, insurers, facility and property managers, representatives from professional and trade bodies, and a wide number of professional services providers.

The three principal professional bodies within the occupied sector – the Property Institute, the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management, and the Association for Project Safety, along with the Construction Industry Council (CIC) – have all been fully involved and supportive of the Building Safety Alliance since its inception, and are now sponsoring the formation of a 'Foundation Charitable Incorporated Organisation'.

[edit] Special interest working groups

The Building Safety Alliance has a growing number of special interest working groups (SIGs) to deliver practical solutions to the sector, supporting best practice compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022 through voluntary collaboration.

It will soon release guidance to the sector and dutyholders to support them towards meeting the golden thread requirements, guidance on competence expectations that 'Owners/Clients' (Principal/Accountable Persons) and those who contract works should be considering, and guidance as to how an organisation may evidence that it has the 'organisational capability' to deliver the services it is contracted to deliver.

[edit] Comments

Anthony Taylor, Interim Chair of the Building Safety Alliance, said:

"This extremely welcome and timely development, after two years' very hard work by many volunteer supporters, will provide us with an appropriately transparent governance regime to ensure that the Building Safety Alliance has a sustainable future for the longer-term. It will also provide a valuable platform for our supporters to be able to continue to their collaboration with to deliver the work needed to implement the new building safety regime."

"Our group continues to grow as the wider sector agrees that collaboration and co-ordination of effort to drive competence and culture change is achieved better, faster and more consistently, together."

[edit] Previous overview of organisation

The Grenfell Tower tragedy brought to the fore how the safety of all buildings needs to be ensured. Recognising the role they play in delivering safe buildings, representatives of both the public and private sector have come together to deliver the change in culture needed and the uniform standard of competence that residents should expect from those responsible for their safety. It is being set up as a not-for-profit organisation.

The Building Safety Alliance will deliver initially two functions:

The certification of individuals wishing to deliver the role of Building Safety Manager (BSM) as an individual and those individuals wishing to act as a nominated individual for organisations delivering the BSM function; and
A publicly accessible register of those certified by the scheme.

The concept of the BSM first featured in Dame Judith Hackitt’s report, Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety. She wanted to make sure there was a clearly and identifiable person who was responsible for the day-to-day management of a building and who could act as the point of contact for residents.

The Building Safety Bill, published on 5 July 2021, outlined the “building safety manager” as a person appointed by the principal accountable person for a higher risk building to carry out such duties relating to the planning, managing and monitoring of Part 4 functions as may be specified in the appointment (the “BSM duties”).

For more information, click here.

This article originally appeared on the BSRIA website under the headline, 'Building Safety Alliance Launched'. It was published in August 2021. The update for 2023 appeared on the CIAT news and blog site as "Building Safety Alliance to become a charity" dated September 2023.

--BSRIA

--CIAT