The Gateway 2 principles are sound but patience with its growing pains is still needed

As with any seismic change to the way housing is designed, procured, regulated and delivered, it was clear from the outset that the Building Safety Regulator’s (BSR) Gateway 2 (GW2) system would demand a certain level of patience. But three years on, as any team behind a recent application will attest, growing pains are still very much evident.

Gateway 2’s remit is expansive. For all housing above six storeys it does away with the old way of procuring buildings, supersedes the RIBA Plan of Work and even design and build finds itself in need of a rebrand – or, at the very least, an asterisk and a footnote. The two milestones that matter most now to housing developers are planning consent and GW2 approval. Both bring in new risk profiles that developers are desperate to untangle and plan for.

Early applications no doubt learned the hard way how high the bar sits. The term ‘sufficient’, in the case of GW2, entails rigorous examination of structure and fire strategy. The BSR want the answers and the workings out, the base principles of design, the ‘how you got there’.

If the test of any relationship is in the ‘let’s move in together phase’, then GW2 funnels the principal designer and contractor into a similar experience – inhabiting each other’s world to understand the issues in the round.

GW2 demands co-ordination and collaboration across disciplines at the highest level, paired against a backdrop of shared responsibility and the upmost care needed to get it right first time. Collaboration, in perhaps the way it should always have been?

Once the application is submitted, the requests for information land with little warning. Each set to a timer of several days. Meetings land in the diary with exclamation marks. Information is rapidly updated, clarified, pointed to, answers formulated. The late-night duties begin – chasing up consultants, cross checking, labelling, packaging and then send. And wait.

So, what could improve the BSR as it begins its next phase of growth? Top of the list should be a new portal. One that is fit for purpose, capable of managing the golden thread of information

The trio of duty holders – client, designer and contractor – are mirrored by the regulator’s multi-disciplinary team (MDT) of experts: structure, fire and building inspector. The BSR acts as conduit, the switchboard operator passing information between applicant and assessor.

Then the Extension of Time notifications arrive, which send an application from the much talked about 12 weeks – the time the BSR said GW2 would take to get approved – to the much less palatable 20 or 24 weeks.

For the unlucky, this can extend even beyond this and into orbit. If most applicants find stomaching the wait challenging, then what of the effect of the wait on combatting the housing crisis and issues like temporary accommodation?

So, what could improve the BSR as it begins its next phase of growth? Top of the list should be a new portal. One that is fit for purpose, capable of managing the golden thread of information.

Maintenance at the switchboard is perhaps the next. Tales from the outside cite enduring communication issues, months lost to silence or inefficient response times, applicants feeling lost at sea without clear direction. Perhaps the BSR’s high standards should apply to its own processes, in the same way it is placed on the application?

If these core issues are tackled, anyone the right side of GW2, will acknowledge that the principles are sound – to provide safer buildings, rigorously analysed and recorded.

Similarly, with the co-ordination and specialist design packages complete upfront, before the site cabins go up, is undoubtedly a better basis for agreeing a contract. The improvement to specification is also worthy of praise.

And as for designer and contractor, both end up with a wealth of shared experience: in preparation, responsibility, duty, risk, of late-night calls and urgent responses, of rigorous due diligence, shared frustrations and achievements.

GW2 approvals are the result of lived shared experience – a marriage built on vows to plan, manage and monitor. And hopefully when the hard hats come out, an uncomplicated time on site.

Niall McHale is an associate and principal designer at Morris + Company