Dame Hackitt Will Reinforce Safety Message at BESA Conference

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21 October 2020 | Updated 29 October 2020

Building safety reformer Dame Judith Hackitt is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s BESA National Conference, which is being held online on November 4-5.

As momentum gathers behind the draft Building Safety Bill, Dame Hackitt is expected to set out exactly what the industry must do to avoid falling foul of the new regulations.

She has already stated that some companies will not survive the new regime because they will be too slow to adapt. Despite new building regulations not being due to come into force until 2023, Dame Judith said company owners and managers needed to start making changes immediately.

“Any part of this sector that thinks it can survive by standing still or defending its current territory is sadly mistaken"

–Dame Judith Hackitt

 

Collaboration across the sector’s supply chains will be crucial to the new culture she envisages and “laggards and dinosaurs…will drop off the end”.

“Any part of this sector that thinks it can survive by standing still or defending its current territory is sadly mistaken,” she told a recent industry summit. “I suspect that some of you are working on the assumption that [you have] two to three years before you really need to worry about this and about changes to current practices and behaviours.

“That is akin to going out on a big party on a night before lockdown in the current pandemic. You’re knowingly taking a risk that you don’t need to, and which you shouldn’t, and you are ignoring the potential consequences. It is also morally indefensible.”

 

Picture: a photograph of Dame Judith Hackitt

 

Building Safety Regulator 

 

Dame Judith, who is chairing the board overseeing the creation of a new Building Safety Regulator said change should start in the boardroom. She has also suggested that processes like design and build may not survive the new regulatory regime as they do not always support building safety.

BESA has been preparing for the changes outlined in the Hackitt Review for some time and chief executive David Frise, who will be in conversation with Dame Judith during the conference, pointed out that the proposed bill included a new competence framework for anyone designing, building or inspecting at-risk buildings.

The BESA Competence Assessment Scheme that uses third party assessors to determine the technical and professional competence of members has been thoroughly revised and updated in readiness for the changes being driven by Hackitt.

“We have known about the planned changes for some time and have been campaigning for them for many years,” said Frise. “The conference will be a great opportunity to hear directly from the person most responsible for driving this once in a generation reform and get a deeper understanding of how this will affect everyone – and I mean everyone – working in building engineering services.”

To register for the BESA National Conference 2020, find out more here. 

Picture: a photograph of some cranes

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 21 October 2020

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