Mastering the Building Safety Act: Creating a robust golden thread

As part of our webinar series with Building Magazine, all centred around compliance, we explored the Building Safety Act, including how you can create and maintain and robust the Golden Thread of building information to satisfy the regulatory expectations.

The Building Safety Act (BSA) came into force on 1st April 2023 and currently relates to high-rise buildings, hospitals and care homes, although there are plans to widen this scope further. It affects everyone who has a responsibility on a construction project, from the client to the principal designer, principal contractor and sub-contractors.

It stems from the 2017 Grenfell Disaster and the ensuing Dame Hackitt review, which gave a damning assessment of the construction industry. The review highlighted the clear gaps and inconsistencies around the information being recorded about a building, as well as the need to create and maintain a golden thread of information. This isn’t just files, documents and models, but also clear records of who has done what work and when.

“There needs to be a golden thread for all complex and high-risk building projects, so that the original design intent is preserved and recorded, and any changes go through a formal review process involving people who are competent and who understand the key features of the design.” – Dame Judith Hackitt.

The Three Gateways

The BSA is split into three gateways, each requiring sign-off before a project can proceed to the next stage:

• Gateway 1 (before planning permission is granted) focuses on obtaining planning permission by demonstrating the proposed design meets necessary safety requirements.

• Gateway 2 (before the start of and during works) involves rigorous inspections during construction to verify adherence to approved plans.

• Gateway 3 (before building can be occupied) ensures the building is fit for occupation.

Is your software up to the task?

A Common Data Environment (CDE) can assist with Gateways One and Two. However, what companies really need is a digital project and document management tool that is just as effective out in the field and out on site, as it is in the drawing office. It’s about being able to record processes, updates and snags against the corresponding plan, drawing or models; providing evidence through tagged 360-degree photos; and all with the location, time and date meta-data attached.

Questions to ask are, can you use the software to define, monitor and validate information both in the office and out in the field? Can you easily establish who viewed what and when? Can you clearly prove what decisions were made and by whom?

It’s also important to ask your chosen software provider about data longevity. With all duty holders required under the BSA to retain information for a minimum of 15 years, and all asset owners for the whole duration of the asset’s lifetime, it’s not enough for the data to be accessible today but also decades down the line.

Competency. Competency. Competency

In many ways, the overarching objective of the Building Safety is competency, and embedding this into the built environment and construction industry. The idea of the Golden Thread is just one implementation of this.

However, how you capture competency can be tricky. While it’s easy to think only about the final product when it comes to capturing evidence and information, it’s just as important to document how you got there and the competency of the people involved, including their qualifications and their decision making. It’s not enough to document what was done but also why, providing you with recordable and traceable judgment.

Dr Simón Santamaria, Technical Development Director at Stantec, said: “Safety is not proven by paperwork, but by showing that every critical decision, who made it, why it was made, and what evidence supported it, can be understood, verified and defended.”

Field View in action

Adam Stanley, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Isoler, spoke about his experience using Trimble Viewpoint Field View, as a building integrity contractor: “We use Field View at all stages of a project, including viewing survey data that is digitally captured and location-based, including the ability to layer this with floor plans and drawings. All inspections are recorded in Field View, while our site operatives can use the tool to view the required firestopping details, carry out the work and then document its completion.

“It’s all about providing the client with the assurance that all the correct details have been carried out. It offers full accountability and traceability, both before a project commences on site, during the works and upon completion, with the ability to know exactly what has been done, by whom, with what materials, and when it was completed."

“In fact, a large portion of the tender process on large projects is now demonstrating our competency with collecting data, reporting on this data and the handover process.”