Building Regulations contractor competency – what does it mean for client organisations?

In accordance with the new requirements of the Building Regulations 2010 and the Building Safety Act 2022 all client organisations are now required to seek assurance that any Principal Contractor or Principal Designer, engaged to undertake any “Building” (as defined in the Building Regulations) works or services, have the required level of competency to undertake such works or services.

Principal Designers will have control over all design work and must ensure that all designers are compliant, and Principal Contractors will have control over all design work and must plan and manage the building work undertaken by all contractors

But the client has a duty ensure that everyone connected with a project is suitably qualified and has the necessary skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours or organisational capability to carry out their portion of the work.

The client must make suitable arrangements for planning, managing and monitoring projects, 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 able to facilitate the exchange of information required to support both duty holders to comply with their obligations. If the project involves work on a High Risk Building they must include a suitable facility to hold the Golden Thread information.

Clients who fail to ensure the competency of Principal Contractors and Principal Designers will be in breach of the 2010 Regulations and subject to unlimited fines and in some cases imprisonment.

While the regulations ultimately aim to ensure that buildings are safe and compliant and have a crucial role to play in ensuring that tragedies such as Grenfell never happen again, they do place an additional administrative burden on housing providers whose resources are already stretched.

The Echelon Group will continue to support its clients with all aspects of the procurement process, and as well as well as undertaking this assessment as part of new procurement projects, Echelon Consultancy and Pretium Frameworks Ltd are currently working with Devonshires to create a standard questionnaire that will be used on all existing works, and services contracts that fall into this category.

We are also developing a flowchart that will assist in enabling clients to identify which works/services will fall under the new requirements and this will be freely available via our website once finalised.