This blog quickly demystifies what you need to know about the Building Safety Act (2022), highlighting who is responsible throughout a building’s lifetime, where it is applicable and what is legally required to keep your organisation compliant.
Also included is a step-by-step roadmap to deploy a successful digitalisation strategy to ensure compliance with the BSA within 6-weeks.
On 14 June 2017, a tragic fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London. The fire resulted in multiple fatalities and was a catalyst for introducing the most significant building safety legislation in 50 years in England, The Building Safety Act 2022.
The BSA applies to every stakeholder along the construction lifecycle. This includes new duty holders who are Accountable Persons (APs) responsible for high-rise buildings (HRBs). This includes:
The BSA has been introduced to enforce improved safety for higher-risk buildings. In England, this includes:
The BSA is an evolving legislation that is designed to promote safer high-rise residential buildings 18 metres in height or at least 7 storeys. Today, the BSA legislation is enforced within England, while Wales is introducing sections of the BSA to promote building safety within its own jurisdiction. Following the Grenfell fire, Scotland has amended its own fire safety and cladding legislation. While Northern Ireland has also made amendments to its fire safety legislation.
The three gateways have been introduced as key dates for stakeholders to comply with the BSA. Gateway 2 and Gateway 3 are vital for compliance as they require a 'Golden Thread’ of building information to be created, stored and updated throughout the building’s lifecycle.
Let’s look at the key dates and description of what is required at each stage.
Flowforma Process Automation can provide you with a full audit trail allowing you to clearly show who has done what and when. It’s a tool ideally suited to helping you meet the Gateway 2 and Gateway 3 deadlines.
The BSA introduced the concept of the Golden Thread for construction. The Golden Thread is essentially a digital audit trail of building safety information across the construction lifecycle. It is the duty of the people responsible for a building to put in place and maintain a golden thread of information. Having a tool designed for recording information in a digital format will mean that all stakeholders will have easily accessible, reliable, up-to-date and accurate information. This is a key requirement of the legislation and requires that information is:
It is imperative that you source a partner who can help your business meet the Golden Thread requirements but also provide a solution that will adapt to the evolving legislation. There are only three routes for you to take to digitalise and only one route to digitalise successfully in under 6-weeks.
1. Out-of-the-box technologies: the first option is out-of-the-box technologies which are complex to adapt to an evolving environment. They are a one size fits all solution that will not be able to change alongside the evolving nature of the BSA.
2. Outsourced consultants: outsourced consultants are another option for digitalising. But this method is not sustainable. It is a costly temporary fix and does not provide a long-term solution for BSA compliance.
3. Fully customisable no code tool: The only solution that provides the speed, agility and adaptability for the BSA is a fully customisable no code tool like FlowForma Process Automation. This provides a fully adaptable solution that empowers your workforce to digitise in under 6-weeks while adapting to evolving environments and needs with internal and external stakeholders. In short, this option will future-proof your business to the present and any future requirements of the BSA legislation.
Build Shield, powered by FlowForma, is all-in-one digital tool for gathering, storing and maintaining the entire lifecycle of building information to support Building Safety Act 2022 compliance.
It’s a no code digital process automation tool designed to capture, store and report on a Golden Thread of information. This is the key requirement that your organisation needs to meet in Gateway 2 and Gateway 3.
Build Shield can help your organisation with:
But with the October 2023 deadline looming, can you digitalise in time? Well, yes you can.
One of the many unique selling points of Build Shield is the speed at which you can deploy and use the tool. Build Shield can be installed via SharePoint with the click of a button, which enables users to rapidly kickstart their digitalisation. To meet the requirements of the BSA, FlowForma has also built out a number of out-of-the box templates, which will accelerate your digitalisation even faster. The templates include common digitalisation requirements for the BSA such as fire safety.
See our BSA templates and real-world fire safety process automation in action!
Watch our On-Demand webinar, Building Safety Act 2022: Your 6-Week Digitalisation Roadmap For Compliance and see how simple digitalisation can be for the BSA.
Build Shield we will support your Golden Thread digitalisation and BSA compliance.
Your BSA compliance timeline will include:
Week 1: Install the FlowForma App for Microsoft 365
Week 1: Accelerated lift-off with FlowForma Specialist help
Week 2: Your 1st process goes live in 2 weeks
Week 2: Train business users for best practice digitalisation
Week 6: Your BSA processes go live
Month 12: You have 50+ processes digitalised
As this timeline indicates, it’s not too late to start your digitalisation journey for BSA compliance. Simply schedule your demo of Build Shiled. Our experts will guide you through every step of the process to successfully digitalisation for BSA compliance.
Schedule your demo