An independent industry led ‘not for profit’ organisation, the Building Safety Alliance, has been launched with the purpose of implementing the certification of competent individuals wishing to deliver the role of Building Safety Manager (BSM) and a publicly accessible register of those certified by the scheme.

The Building Safety Alliance will deliver initially two functions:

• the certification of individual building safety managers (BSMs) or Nominated Individuals within the BSM (organisation) (both referred to as BSMs here)
• a publicly accessible register of those certified by the scheme.

In due course, the Building Safety Alliance also plans to work with others to evaluate how organisations who wish to deliver the function of the BSM can be assessed as having the organisational capability to do so and how to assist contractors and suppliers to higher risk buildings to deliver a competent workforce that understands how to ensure that residential buildings are safe for residents.

The Building Safety Bill, published on 5 July 2021, confirmed the new statutory role of the BSM, a concept first developed by Dame Judith Hackitt in her Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety. 

Anthony Taylor, Interim Chair of the Building Safety Alliance said: “I’m proud to continue to take forward and implement the recommendations from Working Group 8 (WG8) of the Competence Steering Group.  When we were initially asked to develop the competence requirements for the new statutory role of BSM, we recognised that for the framework to work, we also needed to set up wider structures that would support the development of and drive for a recognised and uniform standard of competence.

One of our key recommendations was the need for a register that would allow residents and accountable persons to check if the BSM for their building, meets the minimum competence requirements.  Government is looking at industry to deliver this, so we stepped forward with our wide consortium from across both the private and public sectors.”

The WG8 Competence Framework is now being translated into a Publicly Available Specification (PAS), sponsored by the Ministry of Houseing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Once finalised, this PAS 8673 will be the standard to which the Building Safety Alliance will certify candidate BSMs, before allowing them onto the Register. The PAS is being developed in parallel to the legislation to make sure certified BSMs will be delivered by the time the legislation is implemented.

For further information or to register your interest, please visit the Building Safety Alliance website.