Assent collapse: Are we ready to cope in the face of a chain reaction?

I recently compiled a feature on infrastructure resilience for Building. Resilience is a fascinating, if rather scary aspect of the industry affecting investment, planning and operation. I had not fully appreciated how complex the world of resilience has become – and how unpredictable a cascade of events could be once a risk event has occurred.

As part of my research, I looked at the North Hyde substation fire. This is the trigger event that resulted in the closure of Heathrow airport earlier this year. One of the more surprising findings of the inquiry into the fire was not so much that a power supply failure could trigger a shutdown of the airport, but that neither of the key parties – National Grid and Heathrow – had discussed and built mitigation actions into their operations.

They had a blind spot and judged that the risk was remote. Neither party had considered the potential for a chain reaction.

Reflecting on the collapse of Assent Building Complicance earlier this month, a cascade of unpredictable consequences could also be unfolding. Barely a week after crisis-driven viability measures for the housing market were announced, another crisis is unfolding, potentially affecting tens of thousands of projects across the UK.

Assent played multiple roles in building control, including Building Safety Act consultancy, Building Regulations consulting and acting as Registered Building Control Approvers (RBCA). Following winding-up announcements, RBCA appointments for all projects apart from high-risk buildings (HRBs) could revert to local authority building control. Progress could be delayed until the “reversion” of the appointment is processed, and new inspection arrangements are put in place. Imagine the impact on clients, contractors and their supply chain if work on site is disrupted by this transition.

Preparation of gateway submissions for HRBs could also be disrupted as new advisors are appointed, and as many as 10 residential projects managed under the pre-HRB transition model will be directly affected. More positively, Assent did not have a building control role for new gateway schemes, as the Building Safety Regulator is the building control authority.

>> Also read: Building Safety Regulator says 10 high-rise schemes caught up in building control firm’s collapse

>> Also read: HSE publishes guidance for projects in wake of building control firm’s collapse

Assent Compliance, the parent company, had been loss-making since 2022 and accounts are only available until December 2023. Claims were being pursued against Assent to recover losses in connection with RBCA activities. In retrospect, the company looked vulnerable.

There was even a precedent for the disruption, with both PWC Building Control and AIS Surveyors having failed in 2024. Clients may be asking why they continued to use the company, despite the warning signs, but in practice, the range of options available was limited.

The Building Safety Regulator has 21 registered building control approvers in London, and many English regions have access to fewer than 10 mainly national firms. Either lack of choice meant clients had little option, or lack of curiosity resulted in risks not being checked. The consequence, however, is the same – disruption, losses and most importantly delays to the delivery of much needed homes, schools and other projects.

Construction is accustomed to business failure. Latest Begbies Traynor red flag data published last month highlighted that the number of construction companies in “critical distress” had increased by 70% year on year to over 7,300 in the third quarter. Most of these will be small contracting businesses that are relatively easy to substitute if they go bust.

Construction’s fragmented supply chain and disaggregated supply chain is our key risk management strategy, but ever so often a business such as Assent fails and the cascade of unexpected consequences starts once more. It is not just the risk of business failure that can trigger these unexpected effects. With the constraints of the HRB building safety change process, even changes to a manufacturer’s product range could trigger an unwelcome project delay.

So, are there any insights into the way that Infrastructure manages resilience and disaster readiness that could apply to a single-point failure like the collapse of a critical supplier? The National Infrastructure Commission, now part of NISTA published a detailed study of resilience in 2020 – Anticipate, React and Recover – which has a five-stage framework to deal with a resilience incident. It was designed to deal with floods or wild fires but provides a good starting point for considering a wider set of resilience risks.

• Anticipation – assess the consequence of failure, and if it exceeds a threshold, consider preparations for mitigation.
• Resistance – Assess if the process can cope with a shock without breaking (eg the re-appointment of the RBCA role)
• Absorption – check if consequences can be minimised if a break occurs (eg delays and disruption to a gateway submission)
• Recovery – consider how quickly the service can recover and the consequences of the new process (eg reversion to Local Authority Building Control)
• Adaption/transformation – ensure that the opportunity to improve the system is taken based on lessons learned (e.g. more flexible transition processes)

Viewed through this lens, the building control process appears to be quite brittle. Based on these lessons learnt, are there actions that either the BSR, local building control or project teams could take to make it more resilient?

Relaxing some timescales for re-registration might help, or permitting some work to continue, where not building control-critical, might mitigate the significant disruption to progress on site. Doing nothing would be unwise.

Assent was not JLR or M&S. The failure has triggered a crisis, not a catastrophe. As construction projects acquire more single points of failure, associated with technology providers, proprietary systems, prescriptive approvals processes, and so on, the scale of impact is likely to increase.

With this in mind, it would make sense to adopt a resilience mindset, to be better prepared for a chain reaction.

Simon Rawlinson is a partner at Arcadis