Opinion piece by Dr Melanie Robinson, Senior Digital Consultant, BIM Academy

It has been almost six years since the Grenfell Tower disaster, which tragically took many lives, and as a result we have the Hackitt report which called for the introduction of a new Building Safety Bill and the creation of The Golden Thread of information.

Most recently, the Building Safety Bill was updated in April 2022 when it received royal assent and became an Act of Parliament – with the ambition of tightening up regulation within the UK’s built environment.

Although much is still to be decided through secondary legislation and guidance, which will be released over the coming months and years, the primary legislation will deliver greater protection for leaseholders and shake up building rules.

Building Safety should be a priority for any construction and infrastructure project, and often understanding the requirements of the new Building Safety Act and the expectations of the Building Safety Regulator can be challenging.

Significant changes under building safety reform

Under the new legislation any owner of a high-rise residential building (referenced in Part 4 of the Act) must create, hold and maintain a building safety case, making it available to the Building Safety Regulator upon request. This effort to reinforce the prevention of the spread of fire and mitigate the risk of structural failure is a monumental change for our industry.

As part of the changes set out in the Building Safety Act, a new Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has been created within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) with extensive new powers of regulation, inspection and enforcement. By law, any building safety case must be available to present to the BSR upon request by from October 2023 onwards

The BSR has new powers and responsibilities to ensure the safety of all buildings and will have additional responsibilities for higher-risk buildings moving forward These additional powers apply not only to the design, construction and refurbishment of such buildings, but also to their ongoing safety management while they are occupied, so that residents are safe – and feel safe – in their homes.

The role of the Golden Thread

There has been much debate around the term the Golden Thread and although it has been embraced to some degree on the process of how we design and build, but there is still more to be done on how we measure accountability for design, specification, construction and operational data on our buildings and building products. And even more so on building safety.

Although the term Golden Thread was coined many years ago, in this context it is closely linked to Dame Judith Hackitt’s work on the safety of buildings following the Grenfell tower tragedy in the UK in 2017.

Hackitt’s recommendations led to the critical collection, storage and continuation of data and information throughout the lifecycle of a building – from construction, through to any changes and updates, and onwards.

This thread of data – known now as The Golden Thread of building information – represents a need to standardise project information.

Hackitt proposed that the UK government should develop and agree with the construction industry a standardised format for digital information for the design, construction, and occupation of high rise residential buildings. This data should be kept up to date and developed further during any refurbishments on the building. Critically, the information should be openly and digitally accessible, and secure. This information will be needed in creating the new building safety case.

Looking ahead for building safety

Building owners need to understand what the base level building safety requirements are and what it means to them. Most importantly starting to look at how they will build their own building safety cases and who will be responsible for its creation and maintenance. The BSR states this is the role of the Accountable Person.

The Accountable Person will have a number of duties, including:

• Ongoing duty to assess building safety risks, taking all reasonable steps to prevent the occurrence of a major incident in the building as a result of these risks
• Providing a ‘Safety Case Report’ which demonstrates how building safety risks are being identified, mitigated and managed on an ongoing basis
• Appointing a competent Building Safety Manager to support the Accountable Person in managing fire and structural safety risks in the building day-to-day
• Submitting the prescribed documents and information on the final, as-built building to the Building Safety Regulator – so that it can issue the completion certificate
• Registering the building and applying for a Building Assurance Certificate

The introduction of the building safety case plays a significant role in the safeguarding residents of high-rise building, as such it is essential that the integrity of this information is maintained throughout the building’s lifecycle.

To ensure this, the safe design and construction of high-rise residential will now be underpinned by a gateway process to:

1. Ensure early consideration is given to fire safety
2. Manage change control
3. Preserve the integrity of the building and fire safety information

The collation of information during this gateway process is commonly refereed to as part of the Golden Thread and it ensures that, upon completion, the Accountable Person has all the necessary information to identify, mitigate and manage building safety risks in a consistent, digitised format in carrying out the duties outlined above.

Creating a building safety case

BIM Academy has developed a four stage process that building owners can follow when constructing a building safety case: Review, Enable, Build and Maintain.

Our first stage in undertaking any strategic work is to review what currently exists, this will include understanding how many in-scope buildings exist within an asset owner’s portfolio, what information currently exists on these buildings, and the processes and systems in place to support the maintenance of a Building Safety Case.

The next stage is to enable the first few steps in the roadmap and action plan to build capability. This will include identifying the Accountable Person, increasing awareness of the new responsibilities across the team and setting up the resident engagement strategies where needed.

The third stage is to collate all asset information to build the golden thread that will be the body of the building safety case and the final stage is the maintenance of this information to ensure it is accurate, correct and up to date.

BIM Academy is in the process of developing a detailed process for all building owners to follow when they are setting out their building safety cases. More on this will be released in our talk at Futurebuild on Day 2, Wednesday 8 March at 13.30: Building Safety and the Golden Thread: where do they go next.