Building Regulation Act – Contractor Competency. Are you ready?
The Echelon Group joined forces with Devonshires to deliver a webinar on the Building Regulation Act – Contractor Competency, which was attended by over 220 people.
The session was introduced by Echelon Group CEO Mathew Baxter and delivered by Devonshires Partner Mark London and Professional Support Lawyer James King.
Mark explained that the changes to the Building Regulations 2010 are just one part of a wider package to implement changes and deliver improvements under the Building Safety Act 2022.
Under the new regime, the Government requires the sector to assess competence in a different way, with the aim of raising standards across the built environment and increasing the accountability and responsibility of all parties at all stages of a project.
“Competency has to be assessed in a more robust and inquisitorial way than it has previously,” explained Mark.
Clients (any person for whom a project is carried out), Principal Contractors (a contractor appointed to have control over all building work) and Principal Designers (a designer appointed to have control over all design work) are all duty holder positions.
Demonstrable competence
Anyone now appointed to act as a Principal Designer or Principal Contractor in a project must have demonstrable competence and Clients must be able to demonstrate that that competence has been properly assessed.
Clients have a duty to make suitable arrangements for planning, managing and monitoring a project, and must have a thorough understanding of the requirements, as well as understanding how they’re going to monitor and assess the competence of the Principal Designers and Principal Contractors.
Clients must also enable designers and contractors to cooperate with each other and be in a position to facilitate the exchange of information that is needed by both duty holders in order to comply with their obligations. If the project relates to HRB work, they must include a suitable facility to hold the Golden Thread information.
“Going forward, clients need to be engaged, they need to have the knowledge and they need to have the infrastructure within their organisation to discharge these obligations”, said Mark.
Also, Principal Designers or Principal Contractors cannot accept instruction from a Client unless they themselves are satisfied that the client is competent.
These regulations apply to all buildings, not just high risk, and to all projects covered by the definition of “building work” so any “building work” done to a “building”.
“It’s not just new-build construction. It also involves asset management type projects, where you’re going to be doing planned work that involves design and building work,” explained James.
Frameworks
Pretium Frameworks’ Director of Framework Partnerships Jessica John gave an update on what the new regulations mean for suppliers on both new and existing frameworks, and the session rounded off with a Q&A
“Specific questions are going to have to be asked at a call off level,” said Mark, and “framework agreements in the future are going to require obligations for framework members to notify the framework manager if they believe they are no longer competent or have suffered a sanction.”
Read next: Exploring the impact of The Procurement Act
