Callum Tuckett tells conference he has sympathy with regulator because of ‘volume of work small number of individuals having to deal with’
Multiplex’s UK boss has admitted the delays in the Building Safety Regulator’s (BSR’s) approval of gateway 2 applications are “pretty scary” for the wider construction sector.
The firm is best known for high-rise commercial towers in London but is currently bidding the £1bn 18 Blackfriars scheme, now called the Round, which includes two residential towers of 45 and 25 storeys.
Under building safety regulations, all residential jobs 18m or taller have to get signed off before they can begin construction under a stage called gateway 2.
A third approvals process, gateway 3, is then needed before occupiers can move into the new building.
Callum Tuckett told the British Council for Offices’ annual conference in Milan today: “The [mean] average across those [gateway 2] projects is around 14 to 15 weeks but there’s some significant outliers in that,” he said, expressing frustration that he was unable to get a figure for the median time taken for an application to be approved. “So it’s pretty scary.”
>> See also: Building Safety Regulator considering taking ‘firmer approach’ to bad gateway 2 submissions
Tuckett said he had “feelings of sympathy for those individuals who work in building control and for the regulator”, drawing attention to “the volume of work that a very small number of individuals at the regulator have to deal with”.
“Bear in mind that we spend five, six, seven years working with all that data and information, they get it in one hit,” he said.
He also warned that there still remained uncertainty about how the later stages of the building control process would be managed.
“[With] gateway 3, and then the approval of the buildings and the registering of the buildings, there’s very, very little data on that,” he said. “It’s an unknown, so that could be significantly longer.”
Developers and builders have complained that getting sign-off on jobs from the regulator is taking far too long, holding up schemes and, in some schemes, seeing them pulled.
But BSR chief Philip White said its attempts to engage with applicants rather than simply rejecting submissions on the spot had meant that applications “take longer and appear to be delayed”.
He added the regulator was now looking at taking a “firmer” approach when considering which applications to reject in order to speed up the process.
He said common mistakes in applications included missing details on how key structural components connect, inadequate information on fire resistance of cladding, walls or barriers, corridors that don’t meet evacuation width requirements and poorly designed or unproven smoke extraction systems.
Building is media partner for this year’s BCO conference
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