Summary

Matt Hodges-Long, Founder of TrackMyRisks / Building Safety Register and Steve Bunce Building Safety Case Manager, Lewisham Council discussed challenges in ‘managing building safety information at scale’ focusing on the Building Safety Act, Fire Safety (England) Regulations and Building Regulations impact on high, mid, and low-rise buildings.  

Key challenges included the “golden thread” concept’s practical limitations, resident access rights, and the regulator’s approach to information access,  with comparisons made to vehicle information management systems.  

Future webinars on building safety information management will be held monthly (first Thursday of every month)

Details

• Introduction and Webinar Overview: Matt Hodges-Long and Steve Bunce introduced themselves and the webinar’s focus: managing building safety information at scale, primarily during the occupation phase of higher-risk buildings.  They outlined the format: a short presentation, followed by a Q&A session.
  
• Speaker Introductions: Matt Hodges-Long, from TrackMyRisks, a cloud software platform for managing building safety information, highlighted their various data sets, including a post-Grenfell prohibition tracker and EWS1 data. Steve Bunce, the Building Safety Case Manager at Lewisham Council, described his team’s experience with digital building safety management.
  
• Scale of the Problem and Relevant Legislation: Matt discussed the vast number of buildings requiring safety information management across high-rise, mid-rise, and low-rise categories, emphasising the varying regulations for each.  He detailed key legislation, including the Building Safety Act 2022 and its related regulations, the Fire Safety Order, Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2023 and Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations. Detail was drawn to overlapping regulations and the inconsistency of dutyholder names such as Accountable and Responsible persons.
  
• High-Rise vs. Mid-Rise / Low-Rise: Hodges-Long explained the differences in regulatory requirements for high-rise, mid-rise, and low-rise buildings, noting the potential expansion of the regulator’s scope to include mid-rise and other potential building types in the future.  Bunce estimated that this expansion could increase Lewisham Council’s compliance workload by a factor of 5.
  
• The “Golden Thread” Concept and Reality: Hodges-Long introduced the “golden thread” concept – a single source of truth for building information – and contrasted it with the current reality of multiple, often duplicated, information sources due to regulatory requirements.
  
• Resident Access to Information: Hodges-Long highlighted the significant rights residents now have to access building safety information under the Building Safety Act, emphasising the potential challenges this poses for information management at scale.
  
• Regulator’s Approach to Information Access: Matt criticised the Building Safety Regulator’s current practice of requiring separate copies of information rather than allowing direct access to the golden thread, leading to inefficiencies and added costs. He noted the approach was (in part) due to the legislation.
  
• Comparison to Vehicle Information Management: Hodges-Long contrasted the efficient, government-supported system for managing vehicle information with the fragmented approach to building safety information management.
  
• Building Assessment Certificate Process: Hodges-Long detailed the process for submitting building assessment certificates, including the required documents and associated costs, highlighting the large volume of supporting documentation involved. He posed a question as to whether inefficiency within the Regulator would be billed back to regulated entities through the Fee For Intervention (FFI) mechanism.
  
• Document Management Challenges: Bunce described Lewisham Council’s experience managing thousands of documents, emphasising the importance of version control and a standardised naming convention for efficient management. He described their system for quality assurance and standardised naming conventions for Golden Thread documents.
  
• Distributed Responsibility and Information Assurance: Hodges-Long discussed the challenges of managing information across different teams and departments within a large organisation, highlighting the need for building safety managers to thoroughly review and understand the information they manage.  Bunce reinforced the importance of building safety managers reviewing documents to ensure accuracy and completeness before entering into the golden thread.
  
• Tri Fire Fiasco and Information Integrity: In response to an audience question Hodges-Long discussed the Tri Fire case and its implications for verifying the integrity of building safety information, emphasising the need for both human review and potentially automated systems for detecting unreliable information.
  
• Building Safety Regulator’s Invoicing Practices: Hodges-Long and James Giffin discussed concerns about the Building Safety Regulator’s invoicing practices, particularly the lack of clarity on what constitutes chargeable activities.
  
• Future Lunch and Learn Webinars: Hodges-Long announced plans for monthly webinars on building safety information management, encouraging participation and topic suggestions.
  
• Resources and Contact Information: Hodges-Long provided information about accessing the Building Safety Act Resource Centre and scheduling 1:1 calls to discuss specific issues.

View the video replay of the full Webinar here: https://youtu.be/Jheq9lG5gJo?si=gd07HwF6ab7vzhXk