Are you sure you’re ready for the Building Safety Act? Read our latest blog to understand the interaction between the Golden Thread and the Safety Case and what steps to take to avoid falling foul of the Building Safety Act.
The enforcement of the Building Safety Act is fast approaching. From 1st October 2023, if you own/operate a building of at least 18m in height, or 7 storeys, containing 2 or more residential units, you will be required to comply with the Act or face hefty fines and even imprisonment.
The aim of the legislation is to ensure that safety of occupants and the building have been taken into account and form a part of the ongoing management of a building. The subsequent action points for owners/operators include carrying out a building safety risk assessment and putting in place measures to manage the identified risks. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) will want to see proof of this and can request at any time to see evidence that all reasonable steps to prevent incidents at your building have been taken, and that damage is limited as best as possible in the event of one occurring. All this information should be compiled in a ‘Safety Case’ which can be provided to the Building Safety Regulator on request from 1st October. We expect to see the BSR make examples of non-compliance - don’t be one of these!
The information contained in the Safety Case will be taken from elements of the building’s wider ‘Golden Thread’ (defined by MHCLG as ‘information that allows you to understand a building and the steps needed to keep both the building and people safe, now and in the future’). Unfortunately for building owners and their representatives, we are not any clearer on precisely what information this should be. HSE say ‘the information required for the golden thread of information will vary depending on the building’ and go on to say that it ‘should be stored in an easily accessible, digital format.’
That leaves a very large gap for interpretation of what is actually required. As owners and operators of the built environment, what can be done to simplify this so that we can start to get more comfortable with the idea of a Golden Thread?
Building Passport has been working alongside some of the most prominent names in fire safety in the UK and property industry experts for over 3 years, as well as being founded by the ex-Head of Futureproofing at Avison Young. Drawing on this experience and expertise, we suggest starting with a building-by-building digital information repository with a standardised structure for building information to work from. This means that specific files/reports/information all have a designated place to live, and will live alongside a specific building, forever.
The sheer quantity of information per building can typically be overwhelming, expensive to store and difficult to source - especially when you consider that information might be spread across businesses, professionals and multiple, specialist and complex systems and data sources.
We’ve developed Building Passport to be a central collection of all of a building’s information throughout its existence. It has been built to help building owners overcome current and future challenges in a cost-effective, simple and permanent way, which will, among other vital tasks, help put together the Golden Thread and ultimately the Safety Case.
With Building Passport, you can:
Easily upload (via API or mass-upload), invite others to contribute, and manage all building information in one secure location, saving you time and hassle.
Create your own templates for information that you want to collect (such as your Safety Case), enabling you to monitor at a glance what information you have against what is missing.
Generate a full and accurate record of a building's history, which will live alongside it for its full existence.
Ensure you are meeting your legal requirements and avoiding potential fines by having all necessary building information in ‘an easily accessible, digital format.’
Provide individual, controlled access to building safety information for all building occupants.
Don't risk potential fines or imprisonment by failing to comply with the Act. Start by creating your Building Passport today and curate your Golden Thread by using our mass-upload tool to store and sort all your building information and invite all the stakeholders of your building - including your Accountable Person(s) to contribute. You’ll then be one step ahead when it comes to putting together your Safety Case, and ultimately getting on top of the incoming legislative requirements.
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