Watch the AT Schüco webinar exploring fire-resistant building design in response to the new Building Safety Act.

This AT Schüco webinar explored the challenges of designing fire-resistant buildings under the new Building Safety Act. The first speaker, Sarah Susman, head of technical development at architect Scott Brownrigg, warned that the new fire regulations will have huge implications for change for everyone in the built environment industry. ‘There has to be a change in organisation and industry attitudes – in design team appointments, procurement methods and change control,’ she said. This will affect competence, training and learning; and record keeping. In other words, its effects will stretch far beyond being just another set of rules with which the industry has to deal.

This is the legislation that has been brought in to prevent a repeat of the Grenfell tragedy, and in response to Dame Judith Hackett’s report, which found that current regulations were not fit for purpose. This led to the new Building Safety Bill which had royal assent in April. As Kevin McKeown, divisional director of fire safety at engineering consultancy Hydrock said, ‘this will be the most significant reform of building safety in a generation’.

Speakers (from left to right): Sarah Susman, Kevin McKeown, and Andrea White.

These regulations, which cover both fire and structural security, are particularly relevant to buildings that are considered high risk. At present this means all residential buildings above 18 metres high, plus hospitals and care homes. These categories may be expanded.

The concept is that there will be a digital golden thread running through, from initial design to occupation, maintenance and eventual demolition, to ensure that there is always up-to-date information available on the detail of the building, available to owners, users and occupiers.

In order to ensure that safety has been considered, and checked, at all points, there will be three essential checks, at planning stage, before construction starts and prior to occupation. The latter two of these (gateway two and gateway three) are expected to be ‘hard stops’. The project will not be able to proceed unless the new office of the Building Safety Regulator (set within the Health and Safety Executive) has approved it. The detail has not yet been confirmed, as the government withdrew the original guidance, pending the results of further consultation.

During the construction period, secondary legislation (also still out for consultation) will determine how notifiable and major changes have to be dealt with. This is to ensure that, not only is the building safe as designed, but it is also safe as built.

Mc McKeown explained, ‘Only once Gateway 3 has been passed can a building be registered with the Building Safety Regulator and approved. It will be an offence to occupy a high-risk building that has not been registered and certified.’ And, he stressed, ‘This approach is meant to deliver culture change, with thinking about regulations and safety throughout the construction phase, not mitigation at the end.’

Susman emphasised how much would be involved in the role of the principal designer. ‘The duty-holder for ensuring the design complies is the principal designer,’ she said. ‘Every project will have to have a designated individual for the principal designer role if this role is appointed to an organisation. New liabilities and technical challenges will require architects and design leaders to up-skill to get themselves certified and develop the right competencies. They will have to be in control of all design work, to plan, manage and monitor design work.’

She said that it was not only high-risk buildings that would be affected by the new regime. There would be an impact on all building types in terms of the competence needed.

The third speaker, Andrea White, is a fire engineer who runs her own practice, AW Fire. She gave her perspective on external walls in particular. The Fire Safety Act, she explained, specifies that in addition to the materials of the walls themselves, attached items, such as solar PV, balconies and brises-soleil, need to be assessed. One problem, she said, is that ‘Most fire risk assessors are not competent to assess the materials that make up the building. This hasn’t formed part of fire risk assessment courses for the past 20 years. And it is difficult to get insurance to do this. So it is likely to form an annex to fire risk assessment and will be done by a relatively small number of firms and individuals.’

The complexity is exacerbated, White said, by mortgage lenders who are, understandably looking for reassurance. Many are using the EWS1 form that the RICS devised, which rates the external materials of flats as to whether or not they are of limited combustibility. ‘Those signing the forms,’ she said, ‘have to have specific qualifications and memberships. There are around 100 of us – not many.’

Details are vital in getting fire protection right. White showed some examples where not being aware, for example, of the importance of creating a fire stop around a duct greatly reduced the performance of the building and needed remediation. In future, with the new legislation, she is hoping for a change of culture. ‘My hope,’ she said, is that passive fire protection providers and fire engineers will have more involvement earlier. With external walls, a lot of fire safety measures are not visible at the end of construction. We need to inspect during construction. And we need to consider practicalities, such as access for fire engines, as well as the guidance.’

In response to questions, the speakers stressed that there will be more red tape, more cost which will feed through to the price of homes – especially initially, and that we will suffer from a shortage of fire engineers and potentially of skilled staff to work for the Building Safety Regulator. All these may feel like setbacks, but they will be outweighed easily if the result is better information, improved accountability – and the assurance that a shameful tragedy like Grenfell cannot happen again.