How contractors can avoid the unseen dangers of the Building Safety Act

The Building Safety Act presents new compliance challenges for contractors, whether they are assuming the role of principal designer or not. The risks, the potential cost of things going wrong, and how to meet the challenges head-on are all issues that need to be addressed, writes Alex Harrison of Falconer Chester Hall.

Navigating your way through the Building Safety Act can feel like you’re an explorer charting new territory: there are unknowns behind every headland and reefs a-plenty on the way into seemingly harmless bays. The scope for delay, risk, and all manner of unseen costs is obvious.

Having taken several developer and contractor clients to a Gateway 2 submission – the point where the government’s Building Safety Regulator signs off the detailed design for any building over 18 metres – we have learned where on this metaphorical coastline a contractor can get holed below the waterline. And no surprises: delaying a project in the new regime unlocks a host of costs that quickly diminish a scheme’s viability.

The most obvious thing to note for a contractor is that they need a team around them with the relevant skills and competence to guide them through the process. Whether your architect sits in front as the principal designer or behind as a valued advisor, the point is the same: choose the best possible navigator.

It goes further, of course. Ensuring your principal designer understands how projects can be delivered cost-effectively within the new regime is critical. So, too, is ensuring they have the right resource in place not just to support the delivery of the job in a timely manner, but also to accommodate in a compliant way any changes that might be required to the design during construction, as the job heads towards Gateway 3.

Gateway 2 requires the project team to nail their design colours to the mast much earlier than in the old regime. Collaboration is vital, therefore. Gaining a true understanding of the costs of each construction detail and specification is key before submission. Why? Because amending designs post-Gateway 2 risks unlocking a world of pain with regards to regulatory intervention.

This means working with an architect that understands ‘buildability’ and commerciality within the new regulations.  Having people around you who have designed plenty of tall buildings, and whose culture is one that keeps costs in mind throughout the process, is crucial.

A key factor here is information flow. Orderly, organised, and on-time. Any delay – any at all – in this new world will see costs rack up. Contractors need the comfort of knowing that everything is fully agreed, approvable, affordable, and deliverable in terms of project management and buildable on site.

My advice would be to engage with design sub-contractors and materials suppliers early. Alternatively, choose a design partner who can do this for you. With a large resource to hand, we can push through the gateways at pace on your behalf : it’s unlikely that smaller practices will have the ability to do so, and this may be behind the divergence we’re seeing in the architectural profession. On the one hand, ‘design and planning’ practices that take their great work through to a successful planning conclusion; and on the other, ‘delivery practices’, who go that vital step further and guide clients smoothly through the relatively uncharted waters of the Gateways.

A key benefit of using a delivery practice is that they de-risk the process in myriad ways. Take the core design: reviewing design efficiencies by making this as code-compliant as possible whilst minimising the use of overly novel solutions, means you will secure much speedier approval from a regulator that is under-resourced and instinctively conservative in outlook. Our approach with clients is to advise them on the lowest-risk route forward and then work with the contractor to make a sensible judgement of what should be submitted.

Gateway 2 is only the first set of rocks upon which your plans may be (expensively) dashed. The next great reef is Gateway 3, where you must compare what was built and how, with what was consented at Gateway 2. The old adage that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission may work, but only if there’s a ‘golden thread’ of paperwork and reporting processes throughout construction. This should be controlled by the architect, with clear advice throughout on the risks of favouring certain decisions and what the impact may be at Gateway 3.

Our way of doing things means that, at the point of Gateway 3, all the paperwork will be to hand, the risks of decisions will have already been weighed, and submission can be made with confidence.

But why the future tense?  Because no-one has yet reached that point, anywhere in the UK.  So, if you’re going to work with a delivery-led architectural practice as your principal designer, make sure it’s one with this level of foresight and management resource to give yourselves the greatest chance of a smooth passage.

• Alex Harrison is associate director at Falconer Chester Hall