Understanding the Building Safety Act brick by brick

Shaun: Welcome to this edition of the British Safety Council podcast Health and Safety Uncut.

I am delighted today to be joined by Andrew Saunders, the Policy Team Leader of the Building Safety Regulator, and James Purdy, Technical Director of 4site Consulting.

Andrew has worked for the Health and Safety Executive since 1998, most of that time as one of the Inspectors of Health and Safety. After training, he spent 11 years in field operations, followed by a decade in onshore major hazards, working with COMAH sites across East Anglia. Andrew joined the Building Safety Regulator in June 2021, working in the In-Occupation Operational Policy Team, and is currently the Policy Team Leader for that team. His main areas of work include the Building Assessment Certificate process, including safety case reports.

James Purdy is a Technical Director at 4site Consulting and leads a nationwide team of assessors and surveyors delivering expert risk assessment across fire safety, health and safety, asbestos and Legionella. With a background as a hands-on fire risk assessor, James has extensive experience identifying and addressing the issues that compromise building safety. A member of the IFSM and the IFE, James specialises in turning complex safety requirements into practical guidance, helping property professionals understand critical risks such as fire compartmentation and how to manage them effectively.

Really good to have you here, gents. Just before we start, can I ask both of you for a quick introduction of your way into health and safety and what brings you to where we are today?

Andrew: OK, so I got into health and safety essentially by accident. I completed university. I studied history, so nothing to do with health and safety. I was looking for an interesting career. I had not actually heard of HSE, saw an advert, thought that looks interesting and important, applied and spent 20 years or so dealing with either traditional factories or major hazard sites onshore.

I saw the role advertised to help develop what has now become the Building Safety Regulator. This is obviously post the Grenfell tragedy. It sounded really interesting and really important to help people actually be safe, and feel safe, in their homes. That was five years ago. I am still here. I still think it is an interesting role. It is challenging, and I still think it is massively important that we make sure these things do not happen in the future.

Shaun: And you, James?

James: Thanks, Shaun. Yes, I came into the industry having served 24 years in the Army, and that followed quite a well-worn path into this industry following the transition and the resettlement process and programme that the Army put in place.

So I was lucky enough to get an interview with 4site Consulting, was offered that position, and I started off really carrying out fire and health and safety risk assessments for the first few years in my career there. I have since moved on to more leadership positions, where we have expanded and we are bringing in other elements of health and safety and fire safety.

In this particular case, where we are looking at the building safety case reports and the Building Safety Act, we have adopted that and we are looking to bring that compliance, to provide that guidance for our clients, but also for those residents who live in those buildings, to ensure that those buildings are safe for occupation.

Shaun: OK. Andrew, if I can come back to you then, can we start with the opening question of what is the Building Safety Act and why does it matter now?

Andrew: OK, so the Building Safety Act is a wide-ranging piece of legislation. It has elements that deal with the general built environment. It has sections dealing with regulation of the building control profession and also with the building control process for higher-risk buildings, so that is 18 metres plus, seven storeys or more.

And then the part that I deal with mostly, and similarly James, is the occupied buildings. So those that are actually residential buildings in use, people living in them, and how people are managing the risks: spread of fire and structural failure.

It matters because obviously it came out of the Grenfell tragedy. It matters because we have got a lot of buildings in this country that range from very new to a couple of hundred years old. Almost most of those are being managed well. We need to make sure that those who own the risk in those buildings, for those building safety risks, are actually managing them properly, because people should be able to not only be safe but feel safe in their own homes.

One of the things that came out of the Grenfell Inquiry very strongly was that residents felt their concerns were not being listened to. Hence, it is really important that they feel involved with the management of their building, hence the requirement, for example, of the Residents' Engagement Strategy, to make sure they are involved in decisions that may affect the safety of their building.

Shaun: And so, James, what is your role in this? Are you supporting clients, residents, occupiers, all of the above? What does 4site do in that space?

James: Yeah. So really it is all of the above, Shaun. We work primarily in the private residential sector, so we are working with property managers who are working on behalf of the principal accountable person.

What we are really starting to see within the industry is that, from that understanding of the Building Safety Act and that very theoretical part of it, it is actually how this is being implemented across the industry and how those buildings and those accountable persons are ensuring that work is going on.

We really need to see how, in day-to-day delivery, that is going to be implemented; how we have that understanding of what is required for it. And, as Andrew has just mentioned, seeing that shift from talking about a building and saying, we have got the evidence in place, to how that evidence is applied to the building.

Things such as the structural risk - these are elements that I am not going to say were not thought of before, but they maybe took a back burner from that kind of fire risk assessment. We all saw that kind of general risk assessment. We all saw there were elements that people had taken for granted.

So it is really showing, right, now this is how we are going to evidence that the building is safe for occupation going forward, and how robust it needs to be in order for it to go through the process of gaining that certificate.

Shaun: And Andrew, back to scope-wise then, what is the scope? You mentioned new build and you mentioned buildings several hundred years old. Is it a retrospective thing that people need to be applying?

Andrew: So basically, the bit of the Act that I deal with, the occupied buildings, is buildings that are either seven storeys or more, 18 metres or more, and in either case have at least two residential units. So it is not office blocks, not hotels.

Shaun: It could be one of the blocks that you see in cities where they have got shops downstairs, or a unit and a couple of flats, four or five flats above?

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. We certainly have quite a lot of buildings which have got perhaps a retail unit on the bottom. We have ones where we have retail, we have a hotel, and then we have residential. So yes, the key requirement is the height or number of storeys and that it has at least two residential units.

It is retrospective in the sense that, regardless of the age of the building, if it meets those criteria, then it is classed as a higher-risk building and therefore the requirements of the law will apply.

There is a little bit of a wrinkle with the building control side of things. They deal with slightly more. They also deal with things like hospitals and care homes if they meet that similar requirement. They obviously cover a full range of the building regulations, from A through to - I am not quite sure what letter it goes up to - at least S or T, I think, now.

Whereas we deal, in the occupied space, with spread of fire and structural failure only. As James mentioned, obviously structure is one of those things that perhaps people are less familiar with. But also in terms of the spread of fire, we have still got a lot of buildings that are either under, or need to be, remediated with similar materials, such as those that were found on Grenfell.

Shaun: And is there a timescale for that?

Andrew: So the duties have been in place since January 2024. That is when most of the duties came into play. Part of that then is there are ongoing duties on the accountable persons, principal accountable persons, such as to assess those risks and manage those risks.

There is then, separately, we as in BSR will be calling in buildings for assessment for a Building Assessment Certificate. That is obviously going to take place over a number of years. There are around 13,000 buildings on the register. Obviously we cannot do all of those at once.

So we have prioritised the buildings with the same sort of cladding that was on Grenfell, the very tallest of buildings. We have also prioritised certain large panel system buildings. So we are trying to assess first those with the highest risk profile.

The way I like to try and think about it is, think of the Building Assessment Certificate process as a bit like your MOT on your car. So you have an ongoing duty throughout the year to keep your car road legal. Once a year, in the case of an MOT, or once in a period of time for the Building Assessment Certificate, the tester or BSR will basically take stock of where you are at in terms of whether you are meeting certain legal requirements. If you are, you get the BAC. If not, then obviously we have to deal with the issues that we find.

Shaun: And what about changing the BAC? So, for example, you get issued a BAC and then what is the threshold for alteration or for changes to go back?

Say, for example, in your scenario, you have got a retail unit, you have got a shop, you have got four flats and then you decide you want to go to eight flats. Is there a threshold? How does that work and how would people know that?

Andrew: OK, so there are two elements to that. If you are making a change to the building, regardless of what it is, that would meet the definition of building work under the Building Act, then you would need to apply to the Building Safety Regulator as the building control authority for those sorts of buildings.

We would then expect the accountable persons to update their risk assessment, and the principal accountable person to update their safety case report, because there is a requirement to review, revise and update when necessary to do so.

None of that would automatically trigger BSR calling the building in for a revised assessment. We can do, but none of it would be automatic. There is not a trigger that, if you do X, we call you back in, because the Building Assessment Certificate, crucially, is a moment in time. It has a date. It was issued on that date. BSR was satisfied that the relevant legal duties were being met. It does not have an expiry date, so there is not a set refresh frequency and no particular triggers.

There is a legal requirement to tell us if people update their safety case report, and on a case-by-case basis we could, should we wish to, call that in. Similarly, if there was a serious incident that raised issues about how they were managing the building, then again we could call that in if we wished to.

Shaun: And obviously there is quite a lot for duty holders to be aware of, thinking about how to interpret survey findings, translating the technical data, implementing the risk management. I guess that is where you guys come in. James, is it something you can help support and coach on, or what is your role in that space?

James: Essentially, yes. Just going back to what Andrew is explaining there, where there has been that change, that is quite important, certainly in the industry where you are dealing with different sizes of management companies. You have got some of the large property management companies that are nationwide, where they have got teams in place and they can provide that assistance.

But a lot of the time you might be dealing with a right-to-manage company. That is a panel of residents who live in the building, who have no building safety experience. They may come from completely different industries. It is just that they happen to live there and they have volunteered to put themselves in that position.

Where you are talking about there being changes within that building, it is how are they going to process that change? What kind of system have they got in place? Where is the change management system? Have they got a series of steps they need to go through before they can make that change? So they have got to apply for building control to go in, etcetera, and that all needs to be evidenced within policies and procedures.

That is where our industry can step in and assist people. As I said, a lot of the property management companies have people in place. They have these policies in place already. But you are finding for those individuals in RTMs, or for some of the smaller property management companies that have not really dealt with this, they may only have one or two HRBs within their portfolio and they have not got the experience to know this is what you need to put in place.

So they see the Act. They know this legislation is in place. But they need that assistance in being able to put the policies in, to make sure that goes into some coherent form of report.

The building safety case report is just that written report of how the building is being managed safely. It is the explanation between the building safety case, which is all of that documentation that forms how the building is being managed safely, and the building safety case report, which is the story of that. So that is the narrative of how you are doing it, so Andrew and his team can pick that up and look at it and say, right, we know this building is being managed safely, because it has all been explained and it has all been evidenced within that.

We can see the actions that the PAP, the principal accountable person, has taken within that. And yes, you can see there is risk there, because there is always going to be some element of risk. We all have to live with an element of risk, but it is how that risk is being managed safely and effectively.

Andrew: And I think, coming into that as well, a couple of things. One is acknowledging the fact that there will always be risk. The requirement on accountable persons is to take all reasonable steps to prevent building safety risks, but also to reduce the consequences if they do occur, because you can never say never.

But equally, and again you touched on this, James, it is about being proportionate to the risk. There are some buildings that have features that will make them inherently more hazardous, such as combustible cladding, for example, or large panel systems. Obviously, as a construction method, that has its challenges, but it is about how you are managing it.

It is not about eliminating risk. It is about managing risk. So you do your best to stop it happening, but if it does happen, you do your best to make sure the consequences of that are minimised.

Shaun: You mentioned RTM and HRB. For people who are not familiar with that, what are those acronyms? What do they mean?

James: So HRB is high-rise building, or high-risk building, depending on what you are using it on. And then RTM is right to manage. So it is those residents within the building who have taken that on. They have gone through that right-to-manage process, and you see it fairly commonly.

They still may have a management company involved with them, but some of them are taking on that responsibility themselves. As with all health and safety legislation, it is a bit of a minefield that needs navigating through, and that is where the industry needs to be able to provide that assistance for those individuals.

Andrew: I think the other one we come across quite a lot is RMCs, resident management companies, which are legally different to a right to manage, but essentially it is the same thing. You have residents in the building who have taken on a role.

I think the other thing that is just perhaps important to say is that obviously we have principal accountable persons and accountable persons, who are the duty holders under the Act. In a lot of cases, particularly with RMCs and RTMs, they will be using management companies day-to-day to deliver a lot of this work. The management companies themselves will not necessarily meet that definition of the accountable person.

So it is important that RMCs, RTMs or any accountable person is that intelligent customer, to make sure that they are getting what they need from whether it is a managing agent, whether it is from a consultancy, or from anybody really. It is about the fact that those legal duties cannot be devolved onto others. But obviously we acknowledge that day-to-day, most of these resident-related organisations will potentially be using managing agents, as indeed will much larger companies.

Shaun: One phrase I have heard come up quite a few times in this space is this idea of the golden thread. We have seen that quite a lot now. So tell us a little bit about what that is, why it is important, and why it should matter.

Andrew: OK. So the golden thread, as James already mentioned, you have got the safety case report, which is this summary of how you are managing the building. Then you have got the wider safety case, also known as the golden thread. It is basically the totality of information that you have about your building from which you can distil your safety case report and that demonstration.

There is a set list of things that have to be in this golden thread, which is set out in regulations. It is obvious things like any reports you have got, evacuation strategies if you have them, information about the structure of the building, plans. There is a whole list of different information and documents.

The reason why it matters is because, in order to manage risk, you have to assess risk. In order to assess risk, you need information. So what we say to people, and this is a way of trying to bring the golden thread into that assessment process, is: look at what you have got. What do you know about your building? Where are the gaps? Do those gaps matter?

I use a slightly flippant example, and I do not mean it flippantly, of if you do not know what colour the lobby was painted, from a building safety perspective that probably almost certainly does not matter. If you do not know what your cladding is made of on the outside of your building, that potentially does matter.

Then it is about filling in those blanks. You can essentially have that whole list of information which presents that big picture of your building: the history, the story of your building, for want of a better phrase. Then the safety case report distils that into a manageable report that takes the essence of all that and shows how you are managing those risks.

Shaun: And does the legislation have guidance, prompts, an appendix, a template that people should be using? Or is that where you come in, James?

Andrew: So it depends on which bit of the legislation you are talking about. In terms of golden thread, there is a list in regulations about everything that you are supposed to have for your building. For things like Residents' Engagement Strategy, for example, or even safety case report, the law sets out what it has to contain.

There is guidance on GOV.UK which puts more meat on those bones in terms of what is required. Similarly, we have also published, via stakeholders such as The Property Institute, the criteria that we are using to assess Building Assessment Certificates, so people have that.

There is not a template per se for the safety case report. However, if you look at the criteria that have been published and work to it, it is not a template but it is de facto a template, because if you are covering those issues then you are likely to be providing the information that we need.

James: I think some of the challenges with that, and it is not necessarily to do with a template, are that the industry understands conceptually what is required for that golden thread. It has been talked about a lot. People know that.

But with the buildings themselves, and the management of those buildings, there are gaps in that data. There is legacy data going on. You have got a building that could be 20, 30, 40, 50 or more years old. Within that time, it has been managed by a lot of different people. There has been change of use. There has been a lot of documentation that has probably got lost along the way.

It is about what is required now for that building, for that safety case, to actually provide that golden thread of information. Do they need more support to bring in some of this? It may be fire strategies for the building. If it was built 20 or 30 years ago, that original fire strategy might have disappeared, but also it may not be relevant any more. There might have been a lot of changes in that building since that time.

So it is really assisting people in what they need, doing that gap analysis to see what is missing from that building, whether it can be replaced, and how it should be replaced if that is the case.

But it is also how that information is going to be stored so that it provides that thread. It provides all of that information that can then be passed on to future management of the building, but also go to the regulator as well, so they can see that the evidence is in place. Those reports, building plans and fire strategy are there, and they can see it within that.

That really is a challenge for the industry to ensure that, because we are talking about buildings in occupation. Best will in the world, legislation and guidance have moved on. Now we understand that requirement for storing that data. But in the past, it may not have been understood. It may have been paid a little bit of lip service, even though building regulations had always had it in place. It is actually implementing that in practice.

Andrew: Somebody from a local authority in London actually said to me a couple of years ago, we know the papers exist. They are somewhere in a basement in London. We have got no idea where it is. So that is the challenge, particularly for the older buildings.

Shaun: And who is responsible for compiling the documentation? Is it the developer, the client, the occupier? Who would you expect to do it?

And in doing it, what should they expect in terms of a process? For example, is it iterative? Do you give feedback? Is it one and done? What would somebody expect to experience?

Andrew: OK, so again, it slightly depends what stage of the building you are talking about. If we are talking about a building being constructed, or if there are significant changes being made to the building, there will be a health and safety file. There will be information that has to be passed over on completion to the accountable person.

Shaun: So presumably existing legislation, like the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations and others, all has to mesh together, right?

Andrew: That is still in place. The Fire Safety Order is still in place. The Housing Act and similar are still in place, in terms of the occupied building duties on the accountable person for that relevant part of the building.

Actually, just taking a step back, an accountable person is the basic duty holder under Part 4. Although it says person, most of the time that is an organisation of some sort: local authority, private company, resident management company, etcetera. They are an organisation, or rather an entity, that either owns or has a repairing obligation of common parts.

The principal accountable person is whichever one of those has responsibility for the structure and exterior of the building, and they have additional duties. So a building can have multiple accountable persons, but would only have one principal accountable person. Obviously, the principal accountable person is also an accountable person.

The duty for the golden thread is on the accountable person. They have to compile this information and documents, and if they do not have it, they have to obtain it, unless it is not practicable to do so. What that looks like in practice will vary from building to building.

There is a requirement for that information to be kept digitally. It needs to be secure, accessible, transferable, etcetera. It does not say that it requires a particular computer system or a particular format. On one level, a larger organisation might have a bespoke computer system that deals with the golden thread, and I know there are various ones out there. If it is a resident management company, that might be a number of files or folders in some cloud storage.

We are very much aware that the duties are the same, but how they are implemented depends on the building and on the nature of the duty holder.

It is iterative in the sense of, as I mentioned earlier, start with what you know, work out where the gaps are, do the gaps matter, and then try and fill them, which is essentially what James was saying as well.

We do not routinely, as BSR, look at the golden thread. We may do as part of an investigation, potentially. It is not a direct part of the Building Assessment Certificate process, although obviously it will very rapidly become apparent if you do not have the information to base the assessment of the management of risk on.

We do acknowledge there are challenges, particularly with older buildings. There are also challenges sometimes even with newer ones, of actually getting information from developers or from architects, etcetera. So we do need to recognise the challenge. But equally, some things are important enough that you may need to take steps to actually get that information.

If you know nothing about the structure of your building apart from the fact it is a large panel system building, for example, you need more information than that. If your building has cladding but you do not know what it is, then clearly that is important and you need to know. It may be that in assessing that, or getting that information, you actually tick the box and say, actually, our cladding is not combustible. It meets the various requirements. No further action required. Equally, it might highlight a potential problem or a potential challenge for you to manage.

James: I think ultimately as well, it is to ensure that, for that accountable person, the data they have gathered actually supports their decision making and their process of managing that building safely.

As Andrew said, there are some things that would be completely irrelevant, such as painting the inside of the building. But there are certain critical elements that do need to be included, and it is actually digging that out to make sure they have got that in place.

Shaun: It sounds quite daunting though, when you are dealing with clients or people coming to you. It sounds quite daunting, the level of information that is needed and the scrutiny. I am not saying it is not right, because I think it is entirely right and appropriate, but what are you hearing back and seeing?

James: I think, for the daunting side, it is not necessarily the actual collection of data initially. It is the actual upkeep of that.

Shaun: Yeah, that is what I am thinking: the maintenance and staying on top of it all.

Andrew: Or what do you do with it? If you take your car to the garage and they tell you the tread on your tyres, well, that is great. You know what the tread of your tyres is. But what does that actually mean?

I think also it is about trying to get people into the mindset of not saying, oh, well, it was built to standard 40 years ago, therefore it is fine. Well, it might be, but the chances are that things have changed in that period. But equally, it is about making a simple - simple as a relative term - straightforward demonstration.

Using the cladding example: you have got cladding. You do not know what your cladding is. You have a FRAEW, which is a fire risk appraisal of external walls, carried out by somebody competent. They can come back to you and either say, this is a problem, you need to do X, Y and Z; or actually the risk is tolerable if you do X, Y and Z; or it might equally come back and say it is not combustible, you are fine.

So it is actually using that information to inform your demonstration. Yes, your building has cladding. We have investigated that cladding. It is not a risk, or it is a risk and we have done X, Y and Z and we are planning to do A, B and C.

James: That follows on exactly, Andrew. There may be mitigation measures in place. Say we have got a flammable external wall system in place that has caused the building to not support a stay put policy because of that. Now, that is a temporary measure because that building has to be remediated.

Within that whole process, there are certain elements that need to be included within that golden thread of information. You have got the initial FRAEW that has taken place and said the external wall has created sufficient risk that interim measures are going to have to be put in place. There is a fire risk assessment involved with that as well. That all needs to be done.

There is what those interim measures are. Now you have put a fire alarm system in. Now you have got to keep the updates on that fire alarm. You have got to keep all the other service records on that to show, and that is then going to evidence that the PAP is managing that building as safely as they can be.

There is the action plan for the remediation of the external walls. How is that going to be implemented? When is that going to come in? When, eventually, can the building revert to stay put once that remediation is done? And then what are you going to do about the fire alarm system that is only a temporary measure? That is a challenge for the PAPs.

Andrew: And I think that also highlights a really good point when we are looking at an application for a Building Assessment Certificate. We fully recognise that buildings are going to have things going on. They may well have identified challenges with the building that need to be managed.

What we look for is: OK, you have identified the risks. You know what could happen. What interim measures - a phrase we use quite a lot - do you have to put in for the time being in order to manage that risk while you sort it out?

Then it is the action plan. What are you doing? When are you doing it? What progress have you made? So that we can get a picture of how you are managing that risk.

Again, coming back to the Building Assessment Certificate, it is a snapshot. So we look at whatever date we happen to be on, whatever month, whatever year, and ask: are you taking all reasonable steps to manage that risk? That does not mean everything has to be done and dusted by day one, but it is about what you are doing now and what you are going to do to manage that risk in the long term.

Shaun: Can I ask you a quick question as well about safety case reports? You mentioned safety case reports. A couple of punchy takeaways for people: what is the high-level overview purpose of that, and what are you seeing? What should people be looking out for that you see now? Excellent, and must do better.

Andrew: The purpose of it essentially is a summary, a demonstration and an argument that all of this information you have shows that you are managing building safety risks in that building.

When it is good, we see evidence-based decisions. We see justified assumptions. If a building has ongoing issues, we see action plans and we have an idea. So we have the confidence that people have assessed those risks appropriately and are managing those risks.

To give you an indication, the shortest safety case report I have seen is one and a half sides. The longest one I have seen is 793 pages. Neither of those are aspirations. What we are looking for is a proportionate summary demonstration.

Quite often we are finding that, for example, people have done various assessments - say a fire risk assessment, FRAEW, perhaps a compartmentation survey - and they just throw those in without actually making an assessment of building safety risks.

Shaun: It is not just a document submission exercise, exactly. It is a what test applied?

Andrew: Exactly. You have got these half a dozen different documents to tell you different things about your building. So what does that actually tell you?

Similarly, we are finding sometimes with structural reports that a structural report is not necessarily an assessment. It might be a visual inspection. It may be purely factual. We are back to the tread on your tyres issue. It tells you what the situation is.

Shaun: That car analogy has really resonated with me. As you said it, I was thinking: take your car in for an MOT or for a check-up. They can talk to you about the health of your radiator, or your tyres, or the engine, or your oil levels. But the question is, is it going to get me from A to B safely, right? Those are two very different things.

Standalone elements of a report or a submission only tell you a snapshot of information, not the big-picture piece.

Andrew: Absolutely. Following on from that, they might use the continuing car analogy and say, well, your tyres are almost illegal, or they are two millimetres or whatever. OK, you now know about that. You know you have got an issue. What do you do about that?

That is the key thing. Not that often, but we have found on a few occasions that they have got some really good assessments, not necessarily put together in a coherent whole, but some really good assessments which tell them an awful lot about what their building is and what the challenges are. And that is it. They have not actually acted on those, or again, we are back to the interim measures and the plan for what they are doing in the longer term.

Shaun: So is that something you can help with, James? Is that something you have done or can do, or what is your experience and support in that space?

James: Yeah, and it is. A lot of it, and I would be interested to hear Andrew's opinion on this as well, is where you are looking at proportionality and what you can do.

So you are carrying out risk assessments, you are carrying out a structural safety assessment. What is the proportionality we need to do there? What evidence do you need from those two assessments to decide whether or not you go further, whether or not you go into a more intrusive survey on either side?

Best will in the world, a visual structural assessment will be looking for evidence. But if that evidence is then seen and they have to go for a more intrusive survey, that is going to cost a lot more money than an intrusive risk assessment because of the elements that you need to do. You need to start looking at it from more of a CDM requirement because you are then putting a whole project in on that.

It is that proportionality, and how the building safety case report then manages that and shows that. That is what a good consultant at that stage should be able to do: say, this is how the building is being managed. This is how we have evidenced that management and this is what we are doing about that evidence.

It may be that there is not any requirement to be in there, but you have got something in place and you are just managing it.

Andrew: It is about how you are managing those unknowns. To a certain extent - and this is a very unhelpful phrase, but it is right - it depends.

The more helpful way of saying that is, you do your basic assessment. Using your example, James, of a visual structural survey, if that does not identify any particular issues, you have got no history of problems with the building, no reason to suspect it is not as it is, that is one situation.

You do your visual survey and it identifies X, Y and Z that either is problematic or could be, but needs further examination. I am not an engineer, but, for example, if you have got lots of spalling concrete, or significant cracking, things like that, you then would be looking at, OK, we need to bear in mind that the assessment under the Building Safety Act needs to be, in a typical health and safety phrase, suitable and sufficient. It needs to be suitable and sufficient to allow the accountable person to meet their duties under the requirement to manage building safety risks.

So it might be that in the short term you are managing on the basis of, well, we are not quite sure, so we will manage on the basis of the worst case until we work out what it is.

James: To use the asbestos analogy, unless or until you know it is not, you treat it like it is. It is that kind of process.

Andrew: Equally, there are a limited number of people who can do these, particularly the more invasive work. We do accept that there can be a time lag.

So it is about showing, as you said, James, that you have done the assessment, you have identified what further needs to be done, whether it is in terms of action, whether it is in terms of assessment, and you are showing that story.

Again, it very much depends on the type of building. I am going to go back to the large panel system analogy. If you have got a large panel system building and you have no idea if it was ever strengthened post-Ronan Point, and you have got mains gas, and it was of an age where disproportionate collapse may not have been considered, that is a very different scenario to having a relatively modern building using recognised construction methods, where you have got good information, perhaps 5 or 10 years old, and you have had a visual survey or something like that which has confirmed that there are no major challenges.

It is all about doing what you need to do to make the demonstration that you are doing all you reasonably can. In order to do that, you need information, but the level of information is going to depend.

I am going to give you an example. I was dealing a while ago with a London borough, and they had had somebody come to them and try and say they had to do invasive surveys on their buildings, which is not true. The Act requires them to assess building safety risks. They made a proportionate decision that they did not have much information, so they were going to do a visual on all their buildings, but their eight or nine LPS buildings, they would do a more invasive survey. By taking that proportionate approach, they saved over £300,000. That is money that can be used for other things.

Shaun: Understood. OK. Now, when we come to the end of these podcasts, I ask for our guests to have one key takeaway at the end of each episode, to give the listeners something to think about.

I would like to continue that theme, but give you a bit of a steer. I would like that one thing to focus around what you think organisations should be thinking about now and in the future. What kind of one key takeaway, and as succinctly as you can, because I think these are the points that we want to land, that people can think: right, I am going to go away and think about or do this.

We will start with James, if we can.

James: OK. Essentially, from a consultancy perspective, what we are seeing now, as that legislation has taken form, we have seen it in action and we are seeing it in process, is that shift from understanding the legislation to being able to evidence that understanding, put it into practice, and show how it is being applied in that practice.

A lot of buildings, particularly the existing ones, come with incomplete or fragmented information. As we discussed before with Andrew, it is how does the PAP put that information in? How are they going to go about that? And if they cannot put that information in because it is gone, because of the process of time, how are they going to mitigate that and evidence that they are mitigating that?

That is really what we need to see: how they are mitigating those risks, when they are putting their management processes in place, what decisions they have made, how that action follows that decision, when their action plan is in place, then mitigation and completion, and then verification at the very end of that. That risk has been verified. It has gone from this building as far as it possibly can, and this is how I have done it.

It is really that process that is now starting to take shape. As Andrew was saying, it is not just the story of the building. It is the story of how the building is being managed. That is the important part.

Shaun: So strong record keeping, clarity around the records and staying on top of that. That is your succinct takeaway?

James: Yes. Keeping a record of everything you have done. That is how you evidence that you are managing that building safely and compliantly.

Andrew: I would not disagree with anything James has just said. I think what I would also say is the Building Assessment Certificate process is a snapshot in time. It is going to be a while before every building is called in for that.

The duties exist now. They have been in place for two years, two plus years. Do not wait to start this process of assessing, documenting and actively managing building safety risks.

Do not wait until you are called in for the direction for the Building Assessment Certificate, partly because when you are directed you have 28 days to apply. More fundamentally, those duties exist and it is about people being and feeling safe in their building.

Shaun: Fantastic. Well, Andrew, James, thank you so much for your time there. Thank you for sharing all that experience and insight, and good luck in all this going forwards. I wish you every success. Thank you.

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