Pete Curtis calls on sector’s firms to ‘do something’ to improve compliance amid ongoing gateway 2 delays
The new president of the Building Engineering Services Association has called on its members to stop complaining about the new building safety regime and “do something” to increase compliance.
Pete Curtis questioned whether the services sector had “played our part” in ensuring better building safety as he described assurances about embracing a new culture of professionalism in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire as “lip service”.
In his first speech as president at the trade body’s (BESA) presidents’ lunch yesterday, Curtis said the Building Safety Act had been “dismissed by a large proportion of our industry” when it came into force in 2023.
Curtis, who has more than three decades of experience at £270m turnover M&E contractor Briggs & Forrester, said while more people in the sector are now coming to terms with the new regime, others risk being left behind.
“When [the regime] first came into force, it was dismissed by a large proportion of our industry as irrelevant to anyone who wasn’t directly working on high rise apartment blocks, and even then, it will be up to clients and tier one contractors to deal with,” Curtis said.
“There was lots of lip service about embracing this new culture of safety and professionalism in the wake of the Grenfell tower disaster, but behind closed doors, most people assumed projects would go forward pretty much as before, ignoring inconvenient rules.
“This has been a specialism of construction and its related sectors for decades. We dismissed the reports of Latham and Egan, and many people thought we could probably ignore this as well.”
Dozens of high rise residential schemes across the UK have been delayed, some for more than a year, by the process for gateway 2 approval needed before construction can start under the new regime.
While contractors have criticised the regulator for perceived inconsistencies in responses to gateway 2 applications, the regulator’s leadership has blamed the delays partly on poor quality applications which it claims often lack key information.
In June, the government announced a package of reforms aiming to speed up approvals, including moving the regulator from the Health and Safety Executive into the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
It has also appointed two fire chiefs to lead the body, former London Fire Brigade (LFB) commissioner Andy Roe and LFB deputy commissioner Charlie Pugsley.
Arguing both the government and the regulator had acted to speed up approvals while maintaining the regime’s focus on building safety, Curtis urged building services professionals to make more of a contribution.
“The government has done something. So has the regulator, and the question for us is, have we? Have we done something? Have we played our part?”
He added: “Are we doing enough to embed the new culture? What training are we providing to address our skill shortages? Are we investing in the digital processes that can help our companies submit better planning applications? In short, are we compliant? Is everyone who works for us competent to do a specific job for which they have been appointed to do, and can we prove it? Have we eliminated behavior that can lead to unsafe buildings?”
Earlier, outgoing president Adrian Hurley drew attention to the conclusions of the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, published in September last year, which laid the blame for the 2017 blaze partly on the construction industry’s financial insecurity.
Hurley said: “Cost and speed continue to dominate decision making at the expense of long term best value. Continuing to operate on the slimmest of margins and taking on too much high risk does not encourage high quality delivery.”
Curtis said he wanted the new leaders of the BSR to recognise BESA’s technical audit of its members to be recognised as a proven way to demonstrate competence and compliance, and called for members’ supply chains to meet the same standards.
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