News ACANews AUTUMN 2023
The end of design & build and ‘value engineering’?
The new mandatory role of Building Regulations Principal Designer page 15
The changes are not asking the construction industry to build to different standards, they are telling it to behave to different standards, says Hywel Davies On 17 August the government published new regulations for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) and major changes to the Building Regulations that will enable further parts of the Building Safety Act to be fully implemented in England on 1 October 2023. These changes, which implement what has previously been set out and consulted upon, will fundamentally reform the way that design and construction appointments are made. The Building Regulations (Amendments etc) (England) Regulations 2023 introduce new dutyholder and competence requirements for both practitioners and clients. Part 2A includes 17 new regulations covering the duties, competence and behaviour of clients, designers and contractors. Part 2A also creates the new roles and duties of the principal designer and contractor, which apply to all buildings and are distinct from existing construction design and management duties. For those responsible for managing an occupied HRB or for managing building work in, or to create, a new HRB, there are two new sets of regulations. The Building (Higher-Risk Buildings Procedures) (England) Regulations 2023 set out the new buildingcontrol system for HRBs. Meanwhile, the Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023 cover the operational management of all HRBs in occupation. The new rules require all parties working on HRBs to provide evidence that the installation meets the requirements of the fire and structural safety regulations. To do this, the Building Safety Act divides the
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lifecycle of a building into three ‘gateways’ (planning and design; construction; and completion), to ensure building safety is considered at every stage, and to ensure the original design intent is preserved and changes managed through a formal review process widely known as the ‘golden thread’.
What’s changed? The impact of these changes will be significant. For example, as of 1 October, it is a requirement that HRB designs will have to have been completed before construction can commence. It is no longer acceptable for schemes to be submitted with elements of the design incomplete or “contractor to finalise this design” notes. While this requirement is not quite an outright ban on design-and-build for HRB projects, it is very close to one because the complete design must be submitted for approval at the outset. Similarly, value engineering should largely disappear from the HRB lexicon, too. As often as not, this is the stage where design cohesion starts to disappear from the finished product. Between gateways two (construction) and three (completion), there will be mandatory change-control procedures. If a decision is made to change some component within the building, that change will have to be recorded and, depending on the type of change, the regulator too may need to be informed. What’s more, contractors need to be aware that if they, a client or the designer wants to make a major CONTINUES on page 10 >>>
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