Proud to support World Quality Day 2020

The theme of this year’s World Quality Day is ‘creating customer value.’

In celebration, we look at the effects the Building Safety Bill is likely to have on delivering quality excellence on our projects, ensuring our buildings are safe for the people who occupy them, and at the work that is going on to ensure we are ready when it is enforced.

Creating value for our clients has always been part of our quality culture, and one of our pillars of excellence.

The Building Safety Bill, which is due to come into force next summer, looks set to have a major impact on the industry and is going to transform the way we record information and control quality on projects.

It was introduced in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of building regulations and fire safety after the Grenfell tragedy in June 2017.

The Building Safety Bill is designed to improve building and fire safety in higher-risk buildings, currently defined as residential blocks of a prescribed height, which is likely to be 18 metres or six storeys.

As a business, we have been taking the necessary steps to make sure that we comply with the new legislation when it comes into effect.

Our quality culture means that we will endeavour to apply a more forensic and digital approach to quality delivery consistently across our projects. This will encompass other sorts of buildings, beside the high-rise residential buildings for which the Building Safety Bill is intended, because it is the right thing to do.

As well as just being the right thing to do it just makes good business sense. It will eliminate any kind of doubt within teams about who is recording what data, when and how often. It is all too easy to assume someone is doing their job properly. If we don’t control that information properly we don’t know until, sometimes, it’s too late. It’s about making people responsible and making sure they capture and record the right information at the right time. That certainty is enormously valuable to our clients and it’s why we are keen to be early adopters.
Nicola Markall Head of Technical Compliance

Work is under way to identify what data we need to collect and what digital technology we can use to best capture the “golden thread” required by the bill. This will ensure we have the appropriate processes in place to comply with our reporting obligations and provide a solid, reliable audit trail to every action.

The Bill also sets out a new competence framework for anyone designing, building or inspecting a high-rise residential building, so we are also working to identify how we establish and ensure competency, both of our people and across our supply chain, and how we put in place any training, mentoring or support necessary.

We are proud to sponsor the CIOB World Quality Day Conference taking place on 12th November, from 9am-2pm, with a host of industry leaders.

We invite you to read “Creating Value through quality at Sir Robert McAlpine”, published on 4^th November in Construction Manager.

World Quality Day - The Building Safety Bill

My name is Nicola Markall and I'm Head of Technical Compliance at Sir Robert McAlpine. So,

my role involves assessing and the implications of any legislation that's coming through

and also good industry practice. I'm currently focused on the Building Safety Bill and what

that means for Sir Robert McAlpine. The Building Safety Bill will have a major

impact on our operations on site. It will fundamentally change the way we record,

quality control on our projects and introduces a "Golden Thread" of digital information.

We will work with our supply chain to ensure that we have the right information at the right time,

good quality and accurate records. The Building Safety Bill requires us to make sure that our

people are competent and that we're using a competent supply chain. So, we recognise

that competence is not just around formal qualifications, it's around skills and behaviours

and knowledge and experience. If we build an individual's competence we can help ensure a

defect free building. The Building Safety Bill puts quality control at the heart of operations.

It gives our clients certainty, and it gives end users confidence in the buildings. It's

the right thing to do. We are committed to the Building Safety Bill's successful implementation.

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