Fire Protection Association (FPA) Welcomes The Launch Of The Building Safety Alliance

The newly created not-for-profit organization, the Building Safety Alliance will deliver a publicly accessible register of certified Building Safety Managers in a move that will increase confidence in the competence of these new duty holders prescribed in the Building Safety Bill.

Emerging from the working group activity of the Competence Steering Group, the Building Safety Alliance marks a significant step forward for establishing the role of a Building Safety Manager in higher risk buildings. This is one of three new duty holder roles set out in the Building Safety Bill and will be required once a higher risk building is handed over for occupation.

Creation of the Building Safety Manager role

The creation of the Building Safety Manager role is one of the recommendations from Dame Judith Hackitt’s building fire safety report.

Initially, the Building Safety Alliance will deliver two functions:

• The certification of individual Building Safety Managers
• A publicly accessible register of those certified by the scheme

Building Safety Alliance

Anthony Taylor, Proprietor of Resolve Risk Ltd, chaired the Competence Steering Group’s Working Group 8

In due course, the Building Safety Alliance will work with others to evaluate how organizations who wish to deliver the function of the Building Safety Manager can be assessed as having the organizational capability to do so.

Anthony Taylor, Proprietor of Resolve Risk Ltd, chaired the Competence Steering Group’s Working Group 8 that was responsible for developing the competence requirements for the Building Safety Manager role.

‘Safer people, safer homes: Building Safety Management’ report

The group published a report of its work, ‘Safer people, safer homes: Building Safety Management’ in June 2020.

Mr. Taylor is also leading the British Standards activity to create PAS 8673 Framework for competence of Building Safety Managers. He is the interim Chair of the Building Safety Alliance.

Commenting on the launch of the Building Safety Alliance, Anthony Taylor said: “When we were initially asked to develop the competence requirements for the new statutory role of Building Safety Manager, we recognized that for the framework to work, we also needed to set up wider structures that would support the development of and drive for a recognized and uniform standard of competence."

One key recommendation was the need for a register

The Fire Protection Association (FPA) is one of many organizations supporting the Building Safety Alliance

Anthony Taylor adds, “One of our key recommendations was the need for a register that would allow residents and accountable persons to check if the Building Safety Manager for their building meets the minimum competence requirements. Government is looking at industry to deliver this, so we stepped forward with our wide consortium from across both the private and public sectors.”

The Fire Protection Association (FPA) is one of many organizations supporting the Building Safety Alliance. Other organizations include the National Fire Chiefs Council, the National Housing Federation and the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management.

FPA welcomes the launch of the Building Safety Alliance

The FPA’s Head of Training, Claire Wright, welcomed the launch of the Building Safety Alliance. She said: “This is a great first step to providing a tangible benchmarking for this important role. End users and building owners require a clear path forward to be confident they are not only meeting statutory requirements, but providing the right level of support to their staff and the right level of safety to their occupants. We look forward to seeing how this develops and how we can provide support to the Alliance's aims."

The next episode of the FPA’s Assembly Point Podcast will feature a panel discussion, chaired by Claire Wright, about building competency as the Building Safety Manager. This will be available later in August.