ACANews AUTUMN 2024 by brianwaters1

ACA launches updated standard form of appointment agreement ACA SFA24

The ACA is continually striving to support our Members with updated information, guidance and contracts to support excellence in practice and we are therefore delighted to announce the launch of the ACA SFA24 – our updated Standard Form of Agreement for the Appointment of an Architect.

This contract is for use with traditional forms of building contracting where the architect can be appointed from precommencement to post completion, closely follows its predecessor SFA/2012, which has served both architects and clients well since its inception as SFA/92. It has been updated to include the Building Safety Act 2022 and is suitable

ACA SFA24 Important Facts

for the full range of commercial and consumer projects. It includes model letters for each kind of project to assist architects and their clients to come to a fair agreement on contract terms.

"This update of the popular contract between client and architect meets the need for a fair and balanced Standard Form of Agreement which has been updated to comply with current legislation. New for 2024, the agreement is now available in digital format for speed and ease of use. – Patrick Inglis, ACA President.

The ACA SFA24 can be purchased individually with a 25% Member discount –

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Is it time to bring back council housing? page 22

ACA meets HSE page 39

• Drafted in collaboration with Trowers & Hamlins LLP, Solicitors.

• Is now based on the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 numeric Services Workstages;

• Clearly defines Normal and Additional Services within each Workstage;

• Updated Conditions, including the Architect’s and Client’s Obligations and Authority;

• Improves the balance of rights and responsibilities between Architect and Client over previous editions;

• Services, Fees and expenses can either refer to the Architect’s Proposal letter or be completed in Sched 2 & 3;

• All terms can be fully insured by standard professional indemnity insurance policies;• Up-to-date payment clauses;• Provides for an 8% over base rate charge for unpaid accounts, as set out in legislation (the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest Act) 1998), as in SFA/2012;

• Allows an Architect to resign a commission;• Includes no provision for a Client to require the removal of a member of the Architect’s staff (which could include a partner or a director) from a project;

• Includes optional forms for Collateral Warranties;• Includes Notes for Use of the ACA SFA with model letters;

• Provides for Special terms, and offers the opportunity for attachments to provide for additional documents (e.g.brief, survey, etc) to form part of the contract;• Is not gender specific;

• Has been updated to cover the Building Safety Act 2022 where the Architect can act as the Principal Designer.

Who is using ACA forms of contract? page 13

ACA President Patrick Inglis on Grenfell, the new architects’ appointment agreement and planning reform

FROM THE PRESIDENT

From the President

As the final report on the Grenfell tragedy is published - more than 7 years after the disaster - the consequences continue to affect the profession in significant ways. In particular it is only a year since the rules around Principal Designers were published at the last minute just before the role formally came into force in October 2023. The ACA has responded by keeping members informed and earlier this year set up the Principal Designer Register (www.principaldesigner.uk) allowing architect members to showcase their ability to provide this service.

It is the ACA’s strongly held view that architects are naturally positioned to act as Principal Designer and I encourage members to take the opportunity to perform the role when appropriate. The role provides opportunities for additional fee paying services and is an important strand in insuring that another Grenfell does not happen. In addition the need for involvement in design decisions during construction will give architects great leverage over design changes post-tender providing more control over design outcomes.

In a very busy summer, I am delighted that the ACA has launched an updated version of its Standard Form of Appointment for Architects - SFA24. This is now available in a digital format either as a traditional single use appointment document or as a ground breaking subscription service, which allows unlimited use of the appointment for a modest monthly fee.

The subscription service will also be cheaper than one-off purchases if you use more than a handful of appointment documents a year. As well as being very cost effective, the subscription service means that architects can send a fully completed appointment document ready for the client to sign with their initial fee proposal thereby significantly shortening and simplifying the process of being appointed.

The SFA sits along side the ACA’s PSA appointment document for smaller and simpler projects and completes the updated suite of appointments covering all types and sizes of construction project. More details on the SFA and the subscription service can be found on pages 1 and 17 and the ACA website.

Unleashing a construction boom

The new incoming government has promised to deliver economic growth through unleashing a construction boom and in particular to construct 1.5 million homes over the course of the current parliament. As one of their first steps, the govern-

ment has published a draft NPPF for consultation. The ACA has responded to this on behalf of the profession and Andy Rogers provides a summary of the proposed changes and the ACA’s response on page 4.

The government’s housing targets are very ambitious and their hopes of national economic revival depend on the construction boom they are hoping to stimulate. They have correctly identified planning as a significant impediment to getting the nation building and therefore growing the economy, but so far have not come up with anything radical that might change the narrative of missed house building targets over the last 30 years.

The NPPF reforms largely just undo the changes brought by the previous government last year and apart from this have only promised a handful of new planners and a few task forces to support large planning applications that are stuck in planning along side some other measures.

So it is clear that much more change will be needed if they are going to achieve their aims and experienced practitioners will rightly be skeptical that the current proposals alone will be enough to break the planning log jam, which regularly sees simple planning applications taking over a year to determine - the fact that the planners then typically ask for an extension of time to cover their lateness just adds insult to injury!

The ACA view on how to fix the broken system is that, as well as increasing resources, this would be an ideal moment to reform planning application requirements to get approvals made at the right point in the process. This would involve pushing purely technical matters that have no external impacts such - as fire safety, energy efficiency, internal daylighting etc - into Building regulations and ensure that planners have more resources to focus on the key planning issues and reducing upfront costs for developers. What is not to like about that?

Until next time, Patrick

Patrick Inglis is a Director of Inglis Badrashi Loddo

ACAPAG PLANNING REPORT

To

keep up with ongoing changes in planning go to www.gov.uk and find Planning Practice Guidance, says Andy Rogers

A new Government and another revised NPPF

With a new government come lots of aspirations for reform and improvement of the planning system - only time will tell whether these are effective. Apart from revision of the National Planning Policy Framework and the method of measuring housing need with associated reinstatement of mandatory housing supply numbers in local plans, etc (see NPPF report opposite), some changes In the pipeline include further attention to planning department resourcing and appointment of 300 new planning officers, limiting extensions of time to one, consolidation of the permitted development rules, and the implementation of more sections of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act (LURA) - although this last is open to dispute: for example section 111 of the Act which took effect on 31st March 2024 requires developers to serve a commencement notice before implementing a planning permission, but does not specify exactly how this is to be done.

Included in Labour’s planning manifesto but not yet announced or part of the NPPF changes are proposals for new towns, more planning powers for regional mayors and combined authorities, real sanctions for local planning authorities that fail to update their local plans, development of a ten-year infrastructure strategy, and a commitment to set out new national policy statements and “benefits” for communities affected by development.

Andrew Rogers is Chairman of ACAPAG and a fomer partner in the Manser Practice

The 10% Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) Regulations that came into force on 12 February 2024 for major applications and 2 April 2024 for small sites (those with an area less than 0.5 hectare or with fewer than 10 dwellings and commercial sites below one hectare or with less than 1,000 square metres) have proved and continue to be very difficult to understand and expensive to implement properly. Note, however, that householder and permitted development rights applications are exempt, along with most self-build and custom build developments, and those that impact an area of less than 25 square metres or less than 5 metres of linear habitats such as hedgerows.

A further promised reform that the new government has suggested is to development management and a consultation on this has been promised later in the year. The planning system and its procedures are therefore constantly changing and this is another reminder that all national planning policy guidance is available on line and is regularly updated.

National Planning Policy Framework

Comment from past president

Andrew Catto

I think we need to be clearer that only cutting back the overgrowth will achieve swifter permissions. Higher fees may swell LPA coffers, but extra costs inhibit development and there are no more planning officers available to be hired. To get more permissions out of the same hours (which is what they seek) can only be done by removing from the planning department almost everything outside use and scale. If it is in building regs (and even the dustbins are), that’s when compliance should be checked. Commodity – planning. Firmness - Building Regs. Delight – let the market decide. Good design sells itself. And if anyone needs reminding on that last point, whenever the public are asked what buildings they like / don’t, almost everything they like was built before we had a planning system, and almost everything they hate did need and got planning consent. For policy guidance go to www.gov.uk and find Planning Practice Guidance. n

ACA responds to the new government’s consultation on the proposed revised NPPF

In general the revised NPPF that was issued for consultation on 30th July contains a number of detailed amendments and adjustments to some of the wording of policies which we agree with in principle. In particular, various references to beauty are omitted or replaced by an emphasis on good design, while a widening and clarification of some definitions (eg affordable housing, brownfield land, tenure mix, upwards extensions, grey belt land, etc).

The Method of calculating housing need and the provision of housing land in local authority plans is to be completely revised, with amended targets, but this is very technical and the ACA does not feel competent to comment. There is also in some parts a suggestion that strategic and cross-border planning will be more prominent, along with a greater emphasis on affordable housing provision, which we agree with.

We do believe that the revised document misses an opportunity to improve planning application procedures and performance by concentrating on higher fees instead of reducing the ever-expanding workload of planning officers who now have to comment on a wide variety of technical requirements, many of which do not relate to land use planning and/or are covered by other legislation such as building regulations and so should in our view not be part of the planning process at all.

For anyone keen to respond to the consultation, here is a breakdown of the 106 questions that it asks.

Questions 1-3, 6-11, 15-19, 38-39, 40-41 and 47-50 all relate in various ways to the revised standard method of measurement for housing numbers.

Questions 4 and 5 relate to residential density and design codes. We note that a very recent consultation by the previous government has dealt with these issues, which need caution and careful thought.

In response to questions 12-14 and 20-21, as noted above we do support cross-boundary and strategic planning as well as the new proposed definitions of brownfield and previously-developed land.

Questions 22-39 and 42-46 concern a new green/grey belt policy which allows for the redevelopment, under certain detailed conditions and with a number of caveats, of poor-quality green belt areas, now defined as grey belts. We certainly agree with this concept and the safeguards that are now described.

We also agree with questions 51 - 57, which introduce development with tenure mix/types and widened definitions for some types of housing need and affordable housing requirement.

We agree with questions 58-61, which strengthen small sites policy, remove references to beauty/beautiful and widen the definition of upward extensions, but have no further comments on delivering a diverse range of homes.

More flexibility for building a strong economy, better public infrastructure and a prosperous rural economy are included in the rewording of paragraphs 84 to 87, all of which is agreed (questions 62-69).

We have no comments on the technical changes proposed in paragraphs 97 to 113 on healthy communities and childhood obesity, as well as wind/solar projects, climate change, etc (questions 70-88) except to point out that detailed consideration of some of these issues are often not relevant to land use planning. However we support the emphasis on “a vision led approach” and properly “tested scenarios” for their assessment.

With regard to proposed planning fee increases, we suggest these must be ring-fenced to remain as applied to planning departments. We note that fee increases were implemented very recently and further rises are difficult to justify (questions 89-93). As noted above, resources for planning and development control could be greatly improved by the reduction in workload for planning officers by removing from planning applications whenever possible the many onerous measurable and technical requirements that are covered by other legislation.

Questions 94-96 relate to proposed varied application fees that could be set locally and we disagree strongly with this. First because the planning system is a monopoly and must be open to competition if fees are to be varied in this way; second because it is hard to understand how setting varied fee scales can be monitored (the often exorbitant and unregulated fees charged by local planning authorities for pre-application services that are sometimes of very poor quality demonstrate that this will not work well); and third because as already noted there is no ring-fencing of application fee incomes.

Questions 97 to 106 relate to miscellaneous other planning services, fees for development consent orders, costs recovery, and general comments. n

UK CONSTRUCTION WEEK

ACA excellence in practice

UK’s largest built environment trade show takes place on the 1-3 October at the NEC

UK Construction Week Birmingham (UKCW), the UK's largest built environment trade show, will take place on the 1-3 October at the Birmingham's NEC.

Continuing from the success of UK Construction Week London which included the biggest ever display of international pavilions from China, Turkey, Italy, Estonia and Sicily, as well as high profile speakers including Dragon’s Den star Sara Davies MBE, Architect & TV Presenter George Clarke and former England footballer and now mental health ambassador Trevor Steven. The next Birmingham edition will bring you the forefront of the construction industry’s development.

Across the three days of UKCW Birmingham, industry professionals will have access to unparalleled networking, face-to-face meetings with high profile brands and knowledge boosting seminars, workshops and CPD sessions.

UKCW Birmingham will feature hundreds of leading brands, including Artex, Kingspan, SIG, Don

& Low, Biffa, Fischer Fixings, Reco Surfaces, Hexagon, PlanRadar, BetonBlock, Build Warranty, MERS, Reconomy, Ford and Utility Parts.

This year, the event introduces a new stage dedicated to Net-Zero and Sustainability along with the return of several meticulously curated hubs such as Main Stage, Digital Construction Hub, Live Demo Theatre, Skills & Training Hub, Culture Change Hub and CPD Hub, Skills and Training Hub, highlighting the most pressing topics across the sector.

Additionally, due to growing demand, two new shows will be launched, the 'Roofing, Cladding & Insulation Expo’ (RCI Expo) and ‘Onsite On Hire', bringing six shows under one roof.

The Roofing, Cladding & Insulation Expo (RCI Expo) is the only show in the UK committed to the building envelope and will be connecting tier 1 contractors, suppliers and the wider industry together as the most demanding sectors right now. With major exhibitors already confirmed such as

Cromar Building Products, Rubberseal, SIG, Giromax, G & B Northwest, Britmet, Don & Low and more. The RCI Expo is proudly partnered up with Women in Roofing and the National Federation of Builders.

Similarly, the Onsite On Hire show is dedicated to one of the fastest-growing sectors - equipment hire. The showcase will highlight the latest tools and compact plant equipment, featuring technologies and innovations such as solar/hybrid systems and zero-emission fuel products that aim to reduce the carbon footprint in construction.

UK Construction Week Birmingham is the catalyst for growth in the built environment sector where real change can happen with the face-toface connections forged between global players, policy makers and industry professionals across the 3-day event.

Secure your complimentary ticket here https://ukcw-birmingham-2024.reg.buzz/netmagmedia n

https://ukcw-birmingham-2024.reg.buzz/netmag-media

Principal Designer update

In May, we launched the ACA Principal Designer Register which allows our Members to promote to Clients that they have the ability to act as Principal Designer for Building Regulations and demonstrate they have competencies and experience to take on this role.

In continued support of our Members, we have published the PD Register content hub which is located in the ACA Members Area; here you will find a logo for use on your website and stationery, guidance and articles on the role. We will continue to update information on the content hub as developments occur.

You can refer your Clients to the PD register, however, we would recommend you also develop a personal statement which you can give your Clients or Building Control outlining the self certification process you are required to follow when registering:

• You are aware of and understand the duties of and competencies required of a Principal Designer as set out in PAS 8671 and SI 2023/911.

• You are aware of the duties of a Principal Designer under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015.

• You can evidence if required of your experience in leading

and /or co-ordinating a design team in preparing Building Regulations level information.

• You have done and will continue to undertake CPD on

• the role of the Building Regulations (BSA) Principal Designer

• the revised Building Regulations approvals procedure (Gateways 1,2,3)

• recent and ongoing changes to the Building Regulations.

• You will ensure that the client is aware of their own duties under the relevant legislation before taking up any appointment as PD.

• You will not accept any appointment as PD where you are not the designer with control over the design work as required by PAS 8671 and SI 2023/911.

The criteria may evolve as the industry navigates through the requirements of the PD role.

There is no registration fee and the annual registration fee is just £100 per year; this nominal fee allows the ACA to maintain and update the register accordance with the latest guidance and information. n

£37.50 plus VAT by emailing the ACA directly at office@acarchitects.co.uk; we’ll just need the Site Address to be applied as the watermark and the contract PDF will be emailed once payment has been received.

However, for unlimited use, ACA SFA24 can be purchased at a discounted rate of £15.00 per month - normal price £18.00 per month - through our 12 month subscription service.

multi-use/

https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/combination-package-acasfa24-and-aca-pca22-digital-multi-use/ Continued from page 1 >>>

https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/standard-form-of-agreement-for-the-appointment-of-an-architect-aca-sfa24-digital-

And as a step further, for increased cost efficiencies and ease, our NEW combination package offers our Members an unlimited supply of both ACA PSA22 and SFA24 appointment agreements at a discounted rate of £20.00 per month - normal price £24.00 per month - through our 12 month subscription service.

Matt Cousins is Managing Director of J.S. Held LLC and author of this book

published by Routledge

ACA Council’s summer awayday

The ACA held its annual Away Day in early July and provides the opportunity for Council to get together in person and discuss wider industry topics; we were also joined by our new Student Representative, Joanne Wong. Joanne has an architecture and an engineering degree from Sydney and has just completed Part II at Westminster University.

This year’s conversation was predominantly surrounding the role of the BSA Principal Designer and its impact on Architects, the ACA Planning Manifesto and the proposed reforms to the NPPF were also the topics covered on the day.

As is the tradition, we invite a Guest Speaker to join us for afternoon tea and our evening meal; this year we were delighted to be joined by Matt Cousins, Architect and author of the Architect’s Legal Pocketbook. See below the summary of the talk he gave on the day. Thanks as always to Brian Waters for hosting and providing cream tea and of course, a glass or two of Rosé!

The talk by Matt Cousins

Matt presented a short talk to the ACA Council on the implications for Architects of the Building Safety Act.

This was based on a recent talk that Matt gave for Part III Architecture students at the University of Cambridge on Design Co-ordination and Building Safety.

Matt discussed the widespread implications, new regulations and changes for the architectural profession. Matt talked about the implications of culture change, understanding obligations, duties, risk and the importance for architects to protect themselves.

Matt concluded by discussing the significant opportunities for architects under the Act including in the role of the Principal Designer.

Matt Cousins is an Architect and Managing Director at J S Held in London. Matt is a Professional Studies Advisor at the University of Cambridge, a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster and the author of the Architect’s Legal Pocketbook.

COUNCIL AND OFFICERS

Council Members

ACA COUNCIL MEMBERS OFFICERS

John Assael DipArch GradDip AA MSc RIBA FRSA, ACArch –Assael Architecture Ltd

johnassael@assael.co.uk Tel: 020 7736 7744

Andrew Catto AADip ACArch HON SECRETARY & IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT

Andrew Catto Architects Ltd

Email: ac@andrewcatto.co.uk Tel: 020 8785 0077

Richard Harrison Dipl Arch Poly ACArch

VICE PRESIDENT richardlharrison@icloud.com Tel: 07973 213426

Patrick Inglis MA(Cantab) DipArch ARB RIBA ACArch

PRESIDENT

Inglis Badrashi Loddo Email: patrick@ibla.co.uk Tel: 020 7580 8808

Alfred Munkenbeck RIBA ACArch HON TREASURER

Munkenbeck & Partners Architects

Email: alfred@mandp.uk.com Tel: 020 7739 3300

Andrew Rogers AADip ACArch DipTP MRTPI DipEnv&Dev (open)

Andrew Rogers: Planning Email: AR@awrogers.com Tel: 07841 538869

Brian Waters MA DipArch(Cantab) RIBA MRTPI DipTP ACArch PRESS OFFICER The Boisot Waters Cohen Partnership

Email: brian@bwcp.co.uk Tel: 07957871477

Melanie Hern CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER office@acarchitects.co.uk melaniehern@hotmail.com 07500 180973

Alison Low MA DipArch ACArch DIRECTOR OF ENTERPRISE and Vice President

Alison Low Architect alisonlowarchitect@gmail.com 07947 320298

Members interested in joining Council should please contact the President at office@acarchitects.co.uk

STUDENT representative

Joanne Wong (Post-graduate, University of Westminster)

Robert Peake of Management for Design identifies key considerations for the leadership

BUSINESS SUPPORT FOR MEMBERS

How to increase your productivity without increasing the need for more talent

"How do you manage in today's challenging economic climate and how do you access skilled and capable people to work on your projects?" Yes, things are challenging fiscally for Architects, Engineers and Consultants because they rely on people and skills!

Through good or bad times, the equation that defines business success for professional service businesses remains the same: optimising people skills and capacity increased profitability. While the math may be simple, of course, the realisation of this potential can be a lot more challenging.

Great resource management is the key to solving this equation. It effectively provides a framework within which businesses easily and effectively plan, implement and deploy their people skills.

What is resource management?

You may already be familiar with acronyms such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), PM (Project Management) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and the business solutions that underpin these disciplines.

Resource management (RM) is often seen as a 'sub-set' of these processes. Resource management may also be known under other names, such as 'people planning' or 'utilisation" -but in-essence, it is a solution for planning, managing and deploying the right people and skills on the right projects for the right amount of time.

In our experience, only around 20 percent of firms recognise and use resource management as a high-value, stand-alone discipline which is surprising given that the management of resources is a Practice’s raison d'etre and many businesses often have no overview of their resource situation more than one month ahead. In Architectural businesses, planning resources at least six months in advance enables firms to get the most out of their business.

Resource management is therefore a 'must have' in project-

focused companies. More than ever, there is a need to provide key executives, leadership and project managers with proactive, analytical information they need to support efficient and effective decision making.

Best practices to increase your resource utilisation

So, what are the key "Best Practices that businesses should adopt and be aware of to increase people utilisation and attain higher profitability?

1 Recognise that 'busy' doesn't necessarily mean productive

There's a very big difference between people being busy and being productive. Look around your studio and you'll see people who are busy, yet their utilisation rates and therefore their productive hours are at an unsatisfactorily low level. No doubt you will also experience a complete disparity across the resource pool, with some people overloaded, while others remain underutilised.

When your key resources are people, it's imperative that you make it easy for your people to manage activity and maintain other relevant data in your business systems solution. This should be a familiar, shared and easy to access system. Also, a simple report that gives an overview of historic performance.e.g. out of the planned hours, how many were chargeable? can also ensure that when people say they are "busy, it really does mean they are 'productive'.

2 Don't manage projects on 'guesstimates"

All too often practices do not align project estimation, scope, execution and existing capacity. Making guesstimates on projects is often the key driver in resource under or over-utilisation. Underestimate and you'll be scrambling to find additional resources. If you in danger of missing a deadline on a project because resource management hasn't been at the top of the agenda, you can too easily add additional people to projects or recruit unnecessary additional people.

Both actions can obviously have an immediate impact on

Robert Peake is principal at Management for Design

BUSINESS SUPPORT FOR MEMBERS

ACA excellence in practice

profitability and a 'flow-on' effect on subsequent projects. New people hired for one project may not be needed for the next, so you end up carrying additional and/or unnecessary overhead. Either way, the impact on project costs and profitability can be significant. The lesson? Short-term resource management and planning, combined with a narrow view, can seriously Impact the bottom line. By integrating your future work requirements including potential projects and pipeline with effective resource management you can achieve a better understanding of resource impacts, both short and long-term.

3 Don't over-service clients

One of the biggest challenges facing architectural practices is assigning too much resource to a client, and effectively putting in time that isn't chargeable just to 'keep the client happy. This often happens because there is no clear overview of planned resources and fees against what your people deliver the gap between the two can mean the difference between profit and loss on a project. Integrating your "Resource Management System" with your "Project Management System" provides improved insight into the critical path thus allowing you to focus on the sub-tasks in the optimal sequence

4 Match your long-term project forecast and pipeline with your planned capacity

It is essential to ensure that the projects in your backlog and pipeline can be forecasted, planned and resourced efficiently. Again, integrating your opportunity tracking system with resource management means you can achieve an increased understanding of resource impacts, as well as effectively support your strategic and tactical recruiting, outsourcing and organisational development.

5 Avoid different versions of the truth

Having a uniform management system that encompasses all elements of the business will help ensure consolidation of all finance, client and project information. More importantly, it will provide you with a single and accurate version of the truth. In addition, by having consolidated information "based on facts' in one place (rather than on a myriad of MS excel spreadsheets from project managers and project accountants) there is visibility of project progress across the business, from project manager to senior management level.

6 Consider resource management as the ultimate in Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) technologies can now integrate historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Resource management really represents the ultimate in Business Intelligence (BI) in your organisation. How do you forecast your

current and future work and how do you turn this into your resource requirements? And how do you compare this with your current resourcing and utilisation?

An effective resource management system will underpin and drive your business operations. You can bring in timescales, rolerequirements and other key elements to your resource planning. and link this to your overall BI strategy. Resource management needs to be effective in terms of short, mid and long-term analysis and reporting, adding real depth to your BI efforts.

7 Be prepared to take advantage of market opportunities

Resource management doesn't just mean managing today's work. In identifying skills that the organisation may not have been unaware of, you can create new market opportunities for tomorrow. When you integrate your work pipeline and opportunities with your "Resource Management System", it gives you the necessary information and confidence to bid on new projects. The very fact that you already know if you can fulfil a project should you be selected puts you in a much stronger position to succeed with new proposals.

8 Take traditional ERP, CRM and PM systems to the next level

You might be thinking "we already have a traditional ERP, CRM or PM system to manage our client and project-based operations. Why should we bother with resource management?" The fact is that, while some resource management functionality can be found in traditional ERP systems, it tends to be very much focused on managing resources on single projects, rather than looking at resources across the business.

What's happening with resource management is the same that happened with CRM many years. ago, when firms started to realise that they didn't have a structured way of interacting with clients (and many still don't).

Conclusion

Once you accept that effective resource management is "best practice" in terms of running your people-centric business operations, it's time to look at investing in appropriate solutions. What the right solution does is effectively provide a real-time overview of resource availability that is fully integrated with your project plans. You can monitor availability, workload, chargeability and revenue across all employees, and easily assign people to tasks relating to projects and opportunities.

You avoid projects based on 'guesstimates and target your resources accordingly. You can develop project plans and estimate the cost and revenue of opportunities and real projects, as well as monitor progress with actuals against baseline at any time.

When you have a long-term overview of your capacity situa-

tion, you can work smoothly between operational, tactical and strategic planning horizons and view revenue forecasts. based on the plans. Overall, with an effective system you benefit from having a highly visual, intuitive and transparent resource overview across your business. This can be accessed by the leaders and project managers, as well as employees, in real-time and based on facts.

The Return on Investment (ROI) is compelling for example, if you have a resource pool of 100 people, with an average hourly chargeable rate of £200, finding just one extra hour per month, through the use of effective resource management will result in £240,000 extra revenue per year.

It is evident that when you have a single, integrated solution supporting everybody in your organisation in their project planning and resource-related work, you can really look at increasing profitability. n

With the right solutions, you can:

• Become less prone to the changing economy as you gear your business to match the current market situation.

• See who is doing what at any given time.

• Monitor availability, workload, utilisation, and revenue of all employees, and easily assign people to projects and opportunities.

• Reduce the risk of lost profits caused by under-utilising resources.

• Get a resource overview that is fully integrated with your project plans.

• Tap into the hidden profitability potential of your people as you start billing more hours to clients with greater accuracy.

• Gain a clear insight into long-term capacity plans,

• Formulate exact revenue forecasts based on your resource allocations.

• Have one integrated solution that supports everybody in your business in their project planning and resource-related work.

NHS SBS continues to implement collaborative contracting

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has continued its commitment to supporting the implementation of the recommendations in Constructing the Gold Standard, as well as enabling the policies and guidance set out in The Construction Playbook.

NHS SBS has used the Framework Alliance Contract (FAC-1) across a number of it construction frameworks, including Public Sector Construction Works, Sustainable Transport & Infrastructure, Modular Buildings and Decarbonisation of Estates; these frameworks are worth a combined £15bn and support the NHS to build and future proof their estates, maximising the use of their buildings which is key to creating the right capacity and delivering enhanced patient care.

The frameworks are also widely used across the wider public sector.

Adopting the FAC-1 as the overarching framework contract has provided a structure for supply chain collaboration, reduced risk and greater transparency. This in turn has led to development of sustainable buildings which have delivered excellent value and cost savings across the sector which have then been reinvested into health services.

To find out more, click https://www.sbs.nhs.uk/services/framework-agreements-categories/future-proofing-estates-andinfrastructure/

BUSINESS SUPPORT FOR MEMBERS

ACA has a partnership with Management for Design to provide financial and business management support services to members

if you were to publish a book on architecture, you’d want a publisher on board, but you wouldn’t want the commissioning editor to write the chapter on computational design. The same holds true for R&D tax credits.If you want someone to write cogently about architecture, it’s best to ask an architect.

SUPPORT FOR MEMBERS

R&D tax relief for R&D tax relief for

architects, by architects.

architects, by architects.

Is your practice putting the cart before the horse?

Many architecture practices rely on accountants to produce their R&D tax relief claims, with an architect only checking the 昀nished draft. In this article Andy Hastie explains why this process is back to front and how Invennt’s approach helps 昀rms get more value from the scheme.

The Government’s R&D tax relief schemes (R&D tax credits and R&D expenditure credit) 昀nancially support businesses which develop innovative solutions to technical challenges or advance knowledge through research. As a central pilar of Britain’s knowledge economy, architecture is fertile ground for qualifying activity and practices of all sizes and specialisms have taken advantage of the scheme, granting them the 昀nancial 昀exibility to push the envelope and forge ahead with innovative new designs.

Despite this, many 昀rms 昀nd the process arduous, overlook qualifying expenditure and submit supporting information to HMRC that raises more questions than it answers. This is partly because the R&D guidance needs to cover the full spectrum of the British economy, including everything from pharmaceuticals to video games. But it’s also because 昀rms put the cart before the horse, preparing claims with accountants and asking a professional with relevant knowledge of the discipline to check them afterwards.

But when preparing an R&D tax credit claim, the toughest nut to crack is demonstrating beyond doubt that the work undertaken is eligible under HMRC’s rules. Naturally, there is a science to quantifying the costs, but in knowledge industries where most of the eligible expenditure is people’s time (and especially in industries where sta昀 record billable hours) this is a relatively straightforward exercise.

What really makes the di昀erence to an R&D tax relief claim is professional expertise in the 昀eld, and an understanding of the nuances of the sector. A claim produced without expert knowledge frequently becomes an unwelcome distraction to prepare, overlooks qualifying expenditure and triggers lengthy enquiries from HMRC. Whereas all else being equal, a claim prepared by a professional architect will be stress-free, forensically assessed and result in a report that passes muster with the tax inspectors.

The analogy I use is that if you were to publish a book on architecture, you’d want a publisher on board, but you wouldn’t necessarily want the commissioning editor to write the chapter on computational design. The same holds true for R&D tax credits, because if you want someone to write cogently about architecture, it’s probably best to ask an architect. Of course, it’s still important to have tax and accounting expertise but it should support an architect producing the claim, not the other way around. Our resident architects, Shahd and Lama have studied at some of the UK’s best architecture schools and have practiced at the cutting edge of the industry for years. This experience means they understand the technical detail and nuances of the industry, making communication smooth and ensuring they can ask all the right questions to draw out areas of qualifying expenditure. The result is a robust report that delivers maximum value with minimum hassle.

This unrivalled industry knowledge, alongside the specialist tax expertise of our wider team is a winning formula. Especially when paired with our proprietary thematic analysis and eDiscovery technology, which allows our clients to provide project documentation in bulk, without having to trawl through it for relevant supporting evidence.

The result is a claim that is well-evidenced, robustly prepared and leaves nothing on the table. But don’t just take our word for it, Mark White, Practice Manager at Adam Architecture said this of our approach, “Invennt guided us through their well organised process to deliver the output we needed in a very ecient manner. I would strongly recommend their services.” So, if you need an R&D tax credit claim done properly, ask an architect. Don’t put the cart before the horse.

Next Steps

If you’re already claiming, I encourage you to contact me to explore whether we can improve the process or result. If your practice isn’t claiming, please contact me to book a free exploratory review. Our fee is contingent on the bene昀t you receive, so the only risk from starting the process is a few hours of your team’s time.

+44(0)7948 281571

andy.hastie@invennt.com

Andy Hastie Invennt

Subscription service expands to the new SFA24 agreement

Architect Appointment Subscription Service

In May, we were delighted to launch our ground breaking Architect Appointment subscription service for the PSA22 appointment agreement. This offers a multitude of benefits and ACA Members receive a 20% discount - it’s only £10 per month.

https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/professional-services-agreement-aca-psa22digital-multi-use/

We’ve recently launched SFA24 about which President Patrick Inglis said: “This update of the popular contract between client and architect meets the need for a fair and balanced Standard Form of Agreement which has been updated to comply with current legislation. New for 2024, the agreement is now available in digital format for speed and ease of use.

The SFA24 can be purchased individually with a 25% Member discount –£37.50 plus VAT by emailing the ACA directly at office@acarchitects.co.uk; we’ll need the Site Address to be applied as the watermark and the contract PDF will be emailed once payment has been received.

However, for unlimited use, SFA24 can be purchased via our 12 month subscription service as a Member discounted rate of £15.00 per month (normal price £18 per month):

https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/standard-form-of-agreement-for-theappointment-of-an-architect-aca-sfa24-digital-multi-use/

And as a step further, for increased costs efficiencies and ease, our NEW combination package offers our Members an unlimited supply of both PSA22 and SFA24 appointment agreements at a discounted rate of £20.00 per month - normal price £24.00 per month.

https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/combination-package-aca-sfa24-and-acapca22-digital-multi-use/

The subscription service is available at https://acarchitect s.co.uk/product/pr ofessionalservicesagreement-acapsa22-digitalmulti-use/

ACA excellence in practice

We like to feature the work of members, here a project by Chetham Architecture Design. Please send your contribution to the ACA office for future issues of ACAnews

Guardhouse Cottage – before and after

Background:

The existing property was a detached cottage (originally consisting of three crofter cottages), with parts dating back to the 17th Century. It is located in a spectacular setting, with views towards Blencathra in the North. However, over the years there had been numerous alterations, many of which were not appropriate to the setting or historic nature of the building, including UPVC windows and cement-based render. There were areas of damp penetration and the cottage was very dated internally and in need of complete refurbishment.

Brief:

The brief was to extend and renovate the cottage in order to bring it up to date and make it suitable for modern day living.

Concept:

The concept was to undertake a 'deep retrofit' of the existing cottage in order to improve thermal comfort and provide modern facilities. The layout of the cottage was also amended, so that the main living areas would be located on the first floor, in order to take full advantage of the spectacular views.

Design:

EPC Band: F (Existing), A (Complete)

Client: Private

Architect: Chetham Architecture Design

Structural Engineer: R.G Parkins Ltd

Main Contractor: North Build Ltd

The design is intended to be in keeping with the historic nature of the property and the surrounding landscape, whilst adding a contemporary layer to the palimpsest of architectural history. The extensions are clad in local slate to distinguish them from the original (rendered) cottage. Sustainable and environmentally friendly products were chosen to help reduce the carbon footprint of the project. Renewable energy sources were also incorporated to reduce dependancy on fossil fuels. An open plan layout provides flexibility and together with large areas of glazing, creates a sense of light and space. Two new balconies with patio doors enable the occupants to enjoy the scenery from the first floor and 'bring the outside in'.

Buildability & Assembly:

Traditional materials and construction techniques were used,

which are not only in keeping with the original building, but are readily available and familiar to local contractors.

Functionality & Inclusivity:

The open plan layout is both functional and adaptable. Level access is provided to the ground floor, which also incorporates essential facilities such as Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Utility Room. High levels of glazing create a light and spacious interior, which reduces dependancy on artificial light. Care was taken to protect the privacy of the neighbours in the design of the balcony.

Innovation & Sustainablity:

The renovation of existing buildings is far more sustainable than demolition - the innovation lies in creating a modern sustainable home from what would otherwise have been considered a derelict building. A 'fabric first' approach creates a thermally efficient envelope. Natural materials were chosen, which are environmentally friendly and allow the structure to 'breathe'. Underfloor heating, coupled with an air source heat pump (ASHP), provides an energy efficient heating system, supplemented with two wood-burning stoves. Solar PV panels provide a sustainable source of energy, with sufficient battery strorage to supply power for up to a week. Low energy lighting is used in all fixed outlets. Materials from the original building have been re-used in the interior, whilst new materials have been sourced to respect the local vernacular. Timber trusses also reduce the need for steel beams. Prior to work commencing a habitat survey was undertaken to ensure that no protected or endangered species were harmed during the build.

Performance & Robustness:

The climate in the Lake District can be particularly unforgiving, so the choice of materials is an important consideration. Masonry cavity wall construction is a long established method of building in damp regions such as this, and the addition of slate cladding and insulating render adds an extra layer of defence against the elements. Slate is also renowned for its longevity, as well as its attractive appearance. More contemporary materials, such as aluminium, have also been specified for their low maintenance and recyclability.

London Build is the UK's largest and leading construction show, officially awarded the Best Trade Show in the UK. London Build is colocated with the London Build Fire & Security Expo

London Build: an unmissable two days

London Build Expo 2024

November 20th (Wed)

9.30am - 5.30pm

November 21st (Thurs)

9.30am - 5.00pm

Venue: Grand & National Halls at Olympia London

Featuring 450+ Exhibitors, 700+ Speakers across 12 CPD Conference Stages, 35,000+ Registered Attendees, Networking Parties, Meet the Buyers, DJs, entertainment and so much more.

London Build website: www.londonbuildexpo.com

Conference agenda: www.londonbuildexpo.com/conferenceagenda

London Build 2023 show highlights: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahD1EsA3OCQ

An unmissable two days featuring:

• 35,000+ registered visitors from contractors, architects, civil engineers, developers, local councils, house builders/associations and construction professionals

• 700+ inspiring speakers across 12 CPD conference stages including Skyscrapers & Tall Buildings, Digital Construction, Fire Safety, Sustainability, D&I, Skills & Marketing and more

• 200+ hours of CPD training and education

• The UK’s biggest Festival of Construction with DJs, musicians, live performances, celebrity guests, entertainment and competitions

• Meet the Buyers with Procurement Teams exhibiting from top contractors including Laing O’Rourke, Costain, Skanska, Balfour Beatty, HS2 and many more

• Architect’s Hub with project displays and 3D models of upcoming projects from leading architects across the UK

• Local & Glocal Government Hubs showcasing opportunities for import/export

• Exclusive networking parties co-hosted with leading industry bodies

• The UK’s largest networking events for Women in Construction and Diversity in Construction

• An inclusive Ambassador Programme supporting Women in Construction, Diversity in Construction, Sustainability in Construction and Mental Health in Construction

• 450+ exhibitors showcasing the latest services, products and innovations transforming the industry. n

London Build Fire & Security Expo

London Build Fire & Security Expo is co-located with London Build, the UK’s largest and leading construction show. Due to significant growth and high demand, the London Build Fire & Security Expo is now taking over Olympia London’s National Hall in 2024 as its own dedicated show!

London Build Fire & Security Expo website: www.londonbuildfiresecurityexpo.com

Conference agenda: www.londonbuildfiresecurityexpo.com/conference-agenda

London Build 2023 show highlights: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahD1EsA3OCQ

• 100+ Exhibitors: An exhibition showcasing the latest, cutting-edge technologies and solutions in fire safety & security of the built environment

• 80+ Incredible Speakers: Dedicated Conference theatres for fire safety and building security. Featuring panel discussions, presentations and case study insight from a wide-range of end-users and industry experts

• Thousands of Attendees: Meet, network & do business with thousands of high-quality attendees & buyers

• Feature Areas: A wide-range range of educational, inspirational, and interactive feature area

• Networking: Extensive networking opportunities are embedded into the show floor. Including association-led events, industry meet-ups, Meet the Buyer, Women in Fire Safety, cocktail receptions and more

• Entertainment: Who says trade shows need to be boring? Throughout the two-day event, non-stop entertainment on the show floor is used to create an enjoyable and sociable environment conducive to business networking. Entertainment includes live music, performances, DJs, celebrity guests, street food, giveaways and more. n

Is it time to bring back council housing?

This question comes to prominence for a number of contemporary reasons. The first and most obvious is the shortage of social homes i.e. those which carry subsidy from the taxpayer.

Second is the excellent work by Janice Morphet and friends at UCL researching the growing extent and range of methods by which councils are now procuring social housing (SEE page 46 of the last issue).

The change of government and its priority on building more houses is another but above all the catastrophic policy which has emerged over recent decades of getting private housing developers to use market homes to subsidise social homes, threatening their viability, raising costs and extensively delaying development.

As Paul Finch has said more than once, if the government forced bakers to give away one loaf at half price for every loaf of bread they sold at full price, we would have bread queues. This mirrors what has happened in the housing market especially in London.

A recent book by Jack Young "The Council House" is a paean to the building of council homes over the last century. Started in 1900 when the LCC built Arnold Circus in Shoreditch – still very impressive – it became an established phenomenon under the Addison Act of 1919. Examples

from the book and the author's introduction I reproduce alongside. These are heroic examples and the author illustrates 68 of them. Their declining reputation was down to poor management rather than their designs.

The architects are all named and many are now famous, a proportion of them having been staff of local architects departments rather than consultant architects. Post-war public architects often built empires which tended to exclude consultant architects. This in the end became their downfall. But like so many a swing of the pendulum it has gone too far because local authorities deprive themselves of the architectural skills and talent needed to be able to properly select and instruct consultant architects.

This needs to be rectified and the Borough Architect should be reinstated not only to be able to direct consultants in an expanded house building programme but also to advise the planning department on design matters, as used to be commonplace.

It is easy to blame the right-to-buy policy for some of the demise of council house building but this is not entirely fair. Building magazine used to carry dramatic headlines of how the maintenance of the postwar housing estates would bankrupt the country. Selling homes to their occupiers at a dis-

WATERS WATERS

Brian Waters is joint publishing editor of Planning in London and chairs the London Planning & Development Forum

count so passing on the maintenance liability away from the taxpayer was actually quite a smart move. Its failure was not using the proceeds to build more social homes as was the original stated aim – as usual we can blame HM Treasury for that.

So where does this take us now? Local authorities own extensive land banks, most of them previously developed or 'brown land' and where it is already housing, as many estate regeneration schemes demonstrate, there is good scope for densification.

The Morphet research provides guidance to the considerable range of options in this regard, but we should resist future Borough Architects wanting to keep all the work in-house.

As for funding, the billions spent on housing benefit should be redirected with urgency to a new local authority homes building programme topped up by a tax on the actual profits of private housebuilders (rather than commuted payments on hypothetical and expensively contrived viability exercises) and the new CIL tax should do what it says on the tin, namely only be charged for infrastructure directly necessary for the carrying out of the development and no more. Section 106 agreements likewise and "affordable housing" taxation abolished. n

The book demonstrate the involvement of distinguished architects, here including Denys Lasden [LEFT], Berthold Lubetkin [TOP RIGHT] and many who started their careers at the LCC [under Leslie Martin at Roehampton for example].

Odhams Walk in Long Acre was one of the last to come out of the Greater London Council. By Donald Ball it is based on designs for the courtyards in the aborted scheme for Hounslow Heath by Paul Rutter, Mike Fiertag and your author!

Jack Young’s introduction to the book

My fascination with council estates began with the multicoloured Modernist architecture of Golden Lane Estate (no.19), which I started exploring on my lunch breaks in 2018 while hiding from an ever-mounting workload by day, l'm a digital product designer. It wasn't long before my weekends were spent searching out and photographing more of these playful, surprising buildings that weave their way through the city. Sometimes I would have a destination in mind, but more often I would simply set out from my own home on Camberwell's Lettsom Estate, camera slung over my shoulder, hoping to discover something exciting; it was very rare that I didn't. In my search I got to know London more intimately than ever, navigating its streets by the now familiar tower blocks on the skyline.

Since starting this project I've become increasingly accustomed to the confused stares of onlookers as I take these photographs. Sadly, my enthusiasm for council housing isn't universally shared. Where once these were pioneering projects, undertaken by passionate architects dedicated to providing quality homes to those most in need, today many of London's remaining estates have sadly slipped into disrepair - the public's view of them largely following suit. That is really what has inspired this book. It is my hope that in showcasing and championing the beauty and intelligence in these buildings, I can help to restore some of the rightful pride that was once felt in them. Many of the residents I met while taking these pictures invited me into their lives and their homes. The tales of community they told me often restored my faith in what can feel like a rather isol Hoxton Mini Pressating city. As we bonded over our shared appreciation for their home (or they laughed at me as I obsessed over their ribbed-concrete staircase), their pride in these estates was joyfully clear.

The 68 buildings featured in this book aim to illustrate the endless individualism of London's estates that initially hooked me - the selection revolving around council housing's golden era after the Second World War. Flipping through these pages, hope you too will agree that council housing is beautiful, inventive and inspiring - and as integral to London's architectural make-up as Buckingham Palace or Big Ben. – Jack Young. Hoxton Mini Press £19.95

FROM PLANNING IN LONDON

PDR evolution could unlock useful development

Might more flexibility be applied to changes to residential use to include allowance for external alterations in a single prior approval, asks James Doherty

One of the biggest shake-ups to the planning system in the twenty first century has been the increased use of permitted development rights (PDR) for change of use, which in turn led to the introduction of Class E in September 2020 and further flexibility announced earlier this year.

But do the recent announcements mark the completion of this form of planning consent, or can we expect further changes to follow?

The revolution in permitted development rights began in 2013 with a change to the General Permitted Development Order to specific change of use to address the shortage of homes. Two years later, the permitted development rights to allow offices to be converted to residential use was made permanent.

These early days of change of use from commercial to residential saw some poor examples of office and light industrial conversions into homes, which are well documented (unfortunately dominating the media coverage despite some very successful examples).

To mitigate this impact, in 2020 the government introduced a further requirement, for all new PD schemes to provide adequate natural light and comply with minimum space standards, which are set at a national level.

The next stage in the evolution was the amalgamation of a number of different uses under a single use class umbrella. Class E, a new Use Class category, introduced in September 2020, incorporates a variety of uses including shops and professional services, offices, a range of healthcare uses and indoor recreation – meaning that any changes between these uses do not require local planning authority discretion.

Then, from Class E sprang one of the most useful (if somewhat controversial) permitted development rights (PDR), Class MA, which allows the change of use from Class E to residential (Class C3).

Whilst previously Class O had allowed the change of use from office to residential, due to the wide range of uses covered by Class E, Class MA can now be utilised on many more sites and in many more instances.

The introduction of Class E and Class MA seems to indicate an increased desire from the government to deliver much needed housing and, in theory at least,

Class MA should make this an easier process for developers.

The most recent update to the legislation now makes Class MA an even more attractive prospect as the 1,500 sq m floorspace threshold has now been omitted, as has the requirement for a site to have been vacant for a three month period prior to an application being submitted under Class MA.

Whilst there are very obvious benefits to developers under Class MA – such as no requirement to adhere to councils’ preferred unit mix or provide affordable housing (and lower application fees of course!) – the requirements are not dissimilar from other planning applications in terms of the number of supporting documents required.

For example, in pretty much every Class MA application I’ve been involved in, at a minimum, a daylight/sunlight assessment and transport statement have been required. Other supporting documentation could include a flood risk assessment or noise assessment depending on the site’s location. For sites within a conservation area, an impact assessment will also be needed.

Obviously, there is a need and responsibility to ensure that any residential units created under Class MA offer future occupiers a good standard of accommodation and that all units meet or exceed the minimum space standards and receive adequate levels of natural light (hence the daylight/sunlight assessments).

An common issue with Class MA applications is that the site may tick the majority of boxes, but as the host building was not necessarily designed as residential accommodation, external alterations may be required so that the site is suitable for dwellings. Mostly these alterations relate to the addition or repositioning of windows and doors and, in some cases, the provision of cycle and refuse stores. This often results in a full planning application (for the external changes) running concurrently with the application for Class MA (for change of use) which can cause confusion. An appeal decision in 2022 confirmed the eligibility of a prior approval application and full planning application being submitted simultaneously, so this should provide confidence that concurrent applications can work in unison.

Does this case law indicate the next stage in the

James Doherty is a Senior Planner in the London office of Boyer

evolution of change of use policy? Given the number of instances in which a developer will have to run concurrent applications to ensure a good standard of accommodation can be delivered, could even more flexibility be applied to Class MA which makes allowances for external alterations to be covered in a single prior approval?

It is my opinion that this would certainly make life easier for both the applicant and council and avoid confusion though I understand that any such change would need to be carefully worded to ensure that any external alterations covered by Class MA specifically relate to the need to provide a good standard of accommodation.

More than a decade on from the first change of use legislation was introduced, many of the best opportunities – well located offices and former industrial units with good natural light and access to public spaces – have already been utilised. The next generation of conversions will inevitably require more external changes to meet the necessary standards which cannot currently be achieved through PDR alone.

With the Government having recently updated the legislation to provide more flexibility, is it greedy or wishful thinking to hope that a further update could take place to avoid the hassle of having to, at times, run concurrent applications for ultimately the same end goal?

In view of the housing crisis and the need to provide quality homes, especially on central brownfield locations I, and I suspect many others, would support such a move as the next necessary change in permitted development rights. !"

(SEE the presentation by Assael covered in the LP&DF report)

BSA PRINCIPAL DESIGNER AND PII -

The new regulatory regime for the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) came into force in England on 1st October last year. Howden’s Laurence Paddock looks at the PII implications of the new role for architects

From 1st October 2023 as per the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 20231, all applicable projects (where there is more than one contractor or it is reasonably foreseeable that more than one contractor will work on the project) must have a Principal Designer with control over the design/building regulations element of the project. This role may be undertaken by an individual, or a firm.

It is important to note that this is a distinct and separate role from the Principal Designer role under the Construction Design & Management Regulations 2015 (CDM), which many firms will already be familiar with. Whilst separate, the same firm may undertake both roles where they have the requisite competencies and capabilities to do so. More detail on the required skill and competency for the role is set out in the Act itself, which provides detailed information on the competencies, duties and notices required. Further to this, firms should also refer to the British Standard Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 86712

Whilst the prior Principal Designer role under CDM was primarily focused on health and safety, the duties introduced under the BSA role will be to coordinate design work so that all reasonable steps are taken to ensure that the design (if it were to be built) would be in accordance with the relevant requirements, such as Building Regulations.

Risk and potential pitfalls

The overriding aim of the act is to reduce safety risks on projects (such as fire or structural risks) through greater regulation, scrutiny, shared responsibility and duties of those engaged on projects which in theory, should provide insurers a degree of comfort. However, there will undoubtedly be a number of new (or enhanced) risks to firms during the lifecycle of a project.

Failure to comply with the new duties could have a number of consequences for both firms and the project, such as:

1. Rejection of the application for building control (creating additional costs or delaying projects) or

the inability to obtain a final completion certificate from the building control body engaged. These additional costs may end up forming part of a civil claim.

2. One point of concern is that there is also the potential for individual duty holders to face fines (which are potentially unlimited) and/or criminal prosecution (please note the comments below on insurance cover for criminal prosecutions) from the Building Safety Regulator. These are not mutually exclusive, a civil claim may exist alongside a parallel criminal prosecution.

Cover under Professional Indemnity Insurance

A key question raised by many firms is whether these new duties and more generally the role of Principal Designer under the BSA is covered under their PII. Policies presently do not contain any exclusions or restrictions specifically around the performance of this role and we would not expect exclusions to be imposed in the future, given it is a statutory role. That said, performance will be subject to the existing policy term and conditions and as with other services being performed by Insured firms, performance of this new role should be disclosed to insurers.

Insurers will no doubt be keeping a keen eye on their exposures to this area and, to a degree, the onus will fall on firms to be able to demonstrate to Insurers that they have the requisite competency to undertake this role and that the risks are being effectively managed. Firms intending to undertake this role should ideally be considering:

1. Whether they fully understand the legislation and its impact on the firm;

2. Whether the processes and procedures currently in place are adequate to correctly perform (and monitor performance) of the new role;

3. Whether there are gaps in competency within the practice and if so, how these can be remedied;

4. Whether they have allocated adequate time and resources to perform the role; and

5. That they are conveying this new role, including its responsibilities and obligations, to the client.

Laurence Paddock is Associate Director –Legal, Technical & Claims, Howden

One important point for firms intending to undertake this role will be how the role is reflected within the appointment contract. As a risk management point, firms should seek to ensure that the responsibilities they are agreeing to contractually do not exceed the role as it is contained in statute, either in breadth of duties or the standard to which firms are to be held to. This point is particularly pertinent when considering bespoke client contracts.

Specific Cover (Criminal Prosecution)

One additional point that firms (and the individuals undertaking the role) should be considering is the potential for criminal prosecutions with the act introducing a number of criminal offences and there being the potential for a prison sentence (not exceeding two years) and/or a fine. It is not uncommon for the PII policy to contain an extension to cover for the defence of criminal proceedings (subject to conditions), where for example, a prosecution is brought for breach of CDM Regulations 2015. The breadth of cover available under such clauses does vary from policy to policy and with the introduction of the new duties/role under the BSA, firms should consider whether their current policy extends to provide cover for proceedings under the new regime (rather than being specific to just CDM, for example). If the policy does provide cover, firms should also be considering whether the limit of indemnity for the cover is adequate and whether the terms imposed are too restrictive to be of real benefit.

If you have any specific concerns or queries regarding your insurance coverage with this introduction of the new Principal Designer role, please do not hesitate to contact us via the address below. n

Get in touch: howdengroup.com/uk-en/form/contact-us-in-bristol

1 legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2023/911/regulation/6/made 2 bsigroup.com/en-GB/industries/built-environment/

Are you prepared for your professional indemnity insurance renewal?

The FAC-1 Handbook

“FAC-1 is a truly transformative contract that delivers up new relationships throughout the supply chain, whilst introducing shared systems and an effective approach to risk”. — Rebecca Rees, partner Trowers & Hamlins

To purchase visit the ACA shop: https://acarchitects.co.uk/ product/fac-1-handbook/ excellence

Spring 2023 saw the publication of ‘The FAC-1 Framework Alliance Contract-: A Handbook’, written by FAC-1 author Professor David Mosey and described by John Welch of Crown Commercial Service as ‘the best friend of everyone, in every sector of the construction industry, who wants to make a real difference.’ FAC-1 has been used to integrate and enhance procurements ranging from £5 million to £30 billion across several jurisdictions, and the new Handbook is designed to provide an introduction for those who are new to this form and a refresher for current users. It includes 30 case studies and 46 practice notes to illustrate how FAC-1 can be used by architects and their teams who are engaged on projects and programmes of works, services or supplies in any sector.

FAC-1 has its origins in research by the King’s College London Centre of Construction Law & Dispute Resolution with the Association of Consultant Architects, exploring with over 100 organisations the potential for a new standard form framework alliance contract to integrate a programme of multiple projects or to integrate the components of one or more complex projects. As a multi-party umbrella, FAC-1 connects any range of consultant appointments and JCT, NEC or PPC forms through collaborative systems which can achieve value improvement, risk management and net zero carbon targets.

The UK ‘Construction Playbook’, published in 2020 and updated in 2022, promotes frameworks as an efficient method to procure public works, goods and services and states that a ‘successful framework contract should be based around principles that align objectives, success measures, targets and incentives so as to enable joint work on improving value and reducing risk’. It recognises FAC-1 as ‘a good example of a standard form framework contract that can achieve many of the ambitions set out in this Playbook.’

A contract that only allocates risks and responsibilities does not recognise the value of contractual connections between architects, engineers and the many specialist contributors to construction and engineering projects. FAC-1 makes these connections, and the Handbook examines notable FAC-1 successes such as:

• Integration of a community of micro-SME architects and engineers to share innovations drawn from community knowledge and experience

• Environmental improvements and integration of architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers using modern methods of construction and BIM on the Ministry of Justice New Prisons programme

• 7 per cent cost savings, 48 per cent time savings, BIM inte-

gration and collaborative risk management by designers and contractors on a new school and civic centre project.

For example, the Handbook describes how FAC-1 supports a drive for net zero carbon by including in its definition of improved value ‘measures intended to reduce carbon emissions, to reduce use of energy and or natural and manmade resources, to improve waste management, to improve employment and training opportunities, and otherwise to protect or improve the condition of the Environment or the well-being of people.’ The Ministry of Justice New Prisons alliance used FAC-1 to ensure that the design for the four new prisons would target BREEAM 2018 Outstanding ratings and to establish routes to net zero carbon, for example by achieving a significant reduction in operational energy consumption from the national grid and an 85% reduction in operational carbon emissions.

The purpose of the Handbook is to guide all parties involved in delivering projects or programmes of works, services or supplies through the FAC-1 contractual relationships and systems. It is designed for use by framework providers, clients, designers, managers, contractors, specialists, operators and legal advisers.

An FAC-1 framework alliance creates the foundations for the integrated working practices such as early supply chain involvement, modern methods of construction and BIM that are essential to the modernisation of the construction industry. The Handbook helps clients, advisers and industry to make clear:

• How an FAC-1 alliance is created, between which alliance members and how additional members can be added

• Why the FAC-1 alliance is created, what are the measures and targets for its success and how it is brought to an end if it does not succeed

• How FAC-1 alliance members are rewarded for their work

• How each stage of the agreed scope of FAC-1 works, services and supplies is authorised, in what stages and among which alliance members

• What FAC-1 alliance members should do together or individually in order to improve economic, environmental and social value, by means of what contributions and by what deadlines

• How the FAC-1 alliance members reach decisions, manage risks and avoid disputes.

The Handbook also tracks how FAC-1 brings to life the 24 recommendations for framework contracts that are set out in ‘Constructing the Gold Standard’, Professor Mosey’s independent review of public sector construction frameworks which was endorsed by government and 49 industry bodies in the 2022 version of the Construction Playbook. !

The Construction Excellence verification scheme is an objective system for recognising and supporting those framework providers and clients who adopt Gold Standard Frameworks, framework contracts and action plans

CONSTRUCTING THE GOLD STANDARD

Gold Standard frameworks

Better framework procurement

‘Constructing the Gold Standard’ sets out an integrated and collaborative approach to framework procurement, contracting and management. It is endorsed by public sector clients and by 50 industry bodies in the September 2022 update of the ‘Construction Playbook’.

In 2021, Professor David Mosey CBE was asked by the Cabinet Office to carry out an Independent Review of Public Sector Construction Frameworks. He consulted 120 organisations and ‘Constructing the Gold Standard’ is the result of his work. It sets out 24 recommendations to help clients and industry identify what questions they should ask when creating and implementing construction frameworks and alliances, what answers they should expect and how they can make informed decisions.

The Constructing Excellence Gold Standard Verification Scheme was launched in November 2023 in partnership with King’s College London. It is an objective system for recognising and supporting framework providers and clients who adopt Gold Standard practices and contracts.

The scheme assesses the claims made by framework providers and by clients who procure their own frameworks, and it provides a measure of quality for clients and industry organisations who use and bid for construction frameworks.

CCS is the first of its public sector peers to achieve Gold Standard Verification procurement

How will public sector clients and supply chains benefit from Crown Commercial Service being the first to achieve Full Verification under 'Constructing the Gold Standard'? Here are 10 examples:

1. The 24 Gold Standard recommendations and case studies help all public sector clients and their supply chains to improve value and to reduce risks.

2. The Gold Standard describes contractual systems that convert Net Zero objectives into agreed actions and timetables.

3. The Gold Standard recommendations are integrated with building safety guidance that is designed to avoid another Grenfell Tower disaster.

4. Pipelines of work under Gold Standard frameworks are linked to contractual systems for sharing information to avoid the 'Groundhog Day' of lost learning.

5. Gold Standard framework alliance contracts integrate different commercial interests through practical systems that avoid the collaborative 'Bermuda Triangle' of idealistic debate, cynical criticism and unrealised good intentions.

6. The Gold Standard supports a holistic approach to frameworks and call-offs through the 'Four I's' of intention, information, integration and incentivisation.

7. Proportionate and consistent Gold Standard evaluation of framework and call-off proposals avoids the 'race to the bottom' of uninformed low-ball prices.

8. Gold Standard early supply chain involvement and prompt payment ensure maximum tier 1, 2, 3 supply chain contributions to innovation and social value.

9. Gold Standard framework alliance contracts ensure joint risk management through strategic systems for early warning and dispute avoidance.

10. The Gold Standard recommendations are endorsed by Cabinet Office and by the 50 industry bodies who signed the 'Construction Playbook'.

Gold Standard verification is a robust process led by an Independent Verifier and supported by a Constructing Excellence Task Group. Other applicants are expected to achieve Full Verification in the near future.

“I’m delighted that CCS’s Construction frameworks have achieved Gold Standard status. Our frameworks are designed to facilitate a real shift change in how construction requirements are procured, increasing supply chain collaboration, boosting innovation, supporting carbon net zero targets, and focusing just as strongly on building safety. This accreditation demonstrates how we’re continuously improving our service for customers. It isn’t just about saving them time and money. It’s about maximising their estates to build a better future for the communities they serve.” John Welch FRICS, Commercial Director at Crown Commercial Service.

“The Gold Standard features of the Crown Commercial Service frameworks and alliances, supported by their innovative contracts, have helped clients such as Ministry of Justice and Defence Infrastructure Organisation to achieve impressive efficiencies, innovations and net zero commitments. Their Gold Standard practices and contracts have also ensured new business opportunities and fair treatment for tier 1 and tier 2 supply chain members.” Professor David Mosey CBE, King's College London.

Jane Goddard, deputy CEO and chief marketing officer at BRE, said: “Better procurement is crucial to enable the construction supply chain to effectively deliver a sustainable built environment and meet our climate goals.“It’s great to see Crown Commercial Service demonstrating its leadership in this space through the independent Constructing Excellence scheme and driving best practice across the procuring departments. We look forward to verifying many more framework providers through the scheme in the coming months.” n

'Constructing the Gold Standard' can be accessed at https://lnkd.in/eAAJrnyv

Professor David Mosey, CBE, Centre of Construction Law, King’s College London

Melanie Hern talks to Andie Hastie

QUESTION TIME ...with Andie Hastie

Please introduce yourself

I’m Head of Marketing and Business Development at Invennt, a specialist consultancy for the built environment but I cut my teeth in advertising, which makes me one of the few people in our business who haven’t been involved at the sharp end of construction. But I’ve long held an interest in urbanism and architecture, and I’m often awestruck by what the sector can achieve through the creativity and endeavour of its people. And while I’ve never been at the coalface, I’ve had plenty of experience producing promotional content for commercial and high-end residential developments, alongside a variety of marketing projects for architecture practices.

These days the lion’s share of our business is the assessment and preparation of R&D tax relief claims for companies in the built environment, and my role is to raise awareness of the scheme among firms that aren’t currently availing of the relief, as well as explain the benefits to the process and outcome for existing claimants that aren’t using a specialist to support them.

We have approximately 20% of eligible AJ100 firms on our books but naturally we’d like that to be closer to 100%. There are also countless smaller practices producing designs at the cutting edge of architecture which aren’t currently claiming but could and should be benefiting from the relief. So there is a long road ahead but it is a challenge that I relish.

Describe your typical day.

I wake up in Brixton, South West London and walk to the Tube, keeping my eyes peeled for any construction site hoardings that might reveal potential claimants along the way! Our office is in Central London between Chancery Lane and St Pauls opposite the old Patent Office, which is fitting for a consultancy focussed on innovation, and conveniently located for meetings in and around the city.

Once at the office, the first thing I do is make a coffee (we have our own roast, which we gift to any clients or prospects who visit our office!). Once suitably caffeinated, I check our inboxes and respond to or pass on any enquiries. At some stage I typically prepare or deliver a presentation for a prospective client. I may need to write an article or press release or produce some marketing content with my colleague Danait and at some point, I’ll inevitably need to do some tedious admin! Once the day is finished, I’ll often play squash or patronise one of the Square Mile’s many watering holes!

Andie Hastie is Head of Marketing and Business Development at Invennt

What keeps you motivated?

It's a bit of a mix. First and foremost, there’s the satisfaction of helping businesses receive the support they’re entitled to for pushing boundaries and advancing their field. But it’s also fascinating to learn about the work our clients deliver, whether it be creative problem solving on projects or challenging the limits of what is architecturally possible. It’s a joy to talk to passionate professionals about the projects they’re most proud of, and I hear the same thing from our team of consultants who conduct the assessments. Ultimately, there’s a real sense of purpose among the team, that in our own small way we’re contributing to the built environment and helping the people who create the places and spaces in which we all live and work.

What 3 key messages would you like to convey to our Members in terms of the benefits of R&D in the Architectural sector.

First there is the obvious financial benefit. R&D relief allows businesses to claim approximately 20% of qualifying costs either as a deduction to their tax liability if they are profit making or receive the credit as a cash payment if the business is loss-making for tax purposes. Qualifying costs can be as much as 15% of a practice’s payroll but it averages at around 10%, and there are certain bought ledger costs that also frequently qualify. The benefit can help offset costs associated with developing new design techniques, incorporating advanced technologies, or experimenting with innovative materials and methods.

The second benefit is operational. We find the process of assessing the claim helps businesses disseminate best-practice and innovation more widely within their practice and ensure it is deployed more widely across their project portfolio. It also has a

QUESTION TIME WITH ANDIE HASTIE

ACA excellence in practice

>>> benefit on morale as architects begin to recognise how innovative and sophisticated their work really is, and we find the workshops help cultivate a sense of camaraderie among the team.

Finally, there is a marketing benefit. Sometimes companies in the built environment can be guilty of hiding their light under a bushel, and not articulating just how innovative and creative they really are, so an ancillary benefit to the R&D assessment and preparation process is that it gives a list of case studies that can be used to communicate to potential customers how pioneering and resourceful a practice is.

Why is Invennt better placed to assist our Members with their R&D claims?

Our main competitive edge is that we employ a team of highly qualified architects and engineers who work hand in glove with tax experts. This means they can convey the rules of the tax code in a way a team of architects intuitively understand and meaningfully engage with the information provided by our clients. It changes the entire dynamic of the process as we have architects speaking to architects about their passion, which facilitates a much more discursive, and therefore thorough, assessment process, as well as being more enjoyable for all involved.

The conventional process can involve an accountant explaining the minutiae of the tax code to an architect and an architect explaining the technicalities of parametric design to an accountant, and the finer points often get lost in translation. Sharing a common professional language results in a simpler and more comprehensive assessment process. But as well as streamlining the assessment, our team’s architectural knowledge also means our team can write more persuasive supporting narratives, thereby reducing the risk of an enquiry.

Secondly, our process is designed to remove as much of the burden on our clients as possible. One way we do this is by leveraging eDiscovery technology, so they can provide information in bulk rather than finding specific pieces of evidence. As well as making life easier, it also enables a more forensic assessment process as we often identify qualifying activity that workshop participants would have otherwise forgotten. The eDiscovery process also creates an indexed repository of supporting evidence so we can respond rapidly in the event that HMRC have any questions.

Another way we remove the burden from our clients and make the process more robust is by undertaking a thorough multi-stage review process with both technical and tax experts to pre-empt any questions and nip them in the bud, reducing the risk of lengthy bureaucratic hold-ups with HMRC.

Finally, Invennt is certified with the BSI Innovation Management Kitemark, and we bring this experience to our assessments, helping businesses put in place the correct procedures and policies to record, cultivate, propagate and commer-

cialise innovation in their organisation. This makes the process of identifying innovation easier over time, but it also creates organisations that are more adept at solving problems, prioritising projects and apportioning resources.

Do you think the new Labour Government will have any impact on R&D across the board?

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves has highlighted the new government’s commitment to growth alongside the importance of R&D to support improved economic performance and enhanced international competitiveness. She has also previously emphasised the need for policies that encourage investment in new technologies and research, as well as stated her department’s commitment to improving UK labour productivity. All of which relies on research and development.

They have also stated that they wish to clamp down on waste in government, so it is possible they may wish to increase the level of oversight of R&D tax relief claims, but Invennt welcome any improvements in enforcement and scrutiny, as it will remove bad actors from the market and ultimately improve the experience for advisors and clients that are playing by the rules.

If you had a super power, what would it be and why?

I would like to be able to perform a Jedi Mind Trick that makes people respond to emails or answer their phone, as it would make negotiating with prospective customers significantly easier!

Are you an early bird or night owl?

Undoubtedly a night owl! My alarm clock is my single greatest bête-noir.

Describe an interesting or fun fact about yourself?

I have the same name as a controversial Australian MP, which results in frequent misdirected abuse on social media. However, I was cock-a-hoop when Twitter tried to verify my account as a public figure, but somewhat chastened when I learned that they too had mistaken me for my Antipodean namesake.

CTA

If you’re already claiming, I encourage you to contact me to explore whether we can improve the process or result. If your practice isn’t claiming, please contact me to book a free exploratory review. Our fee is contingent on the benefit you receive, so the only risk from starting the process is a few hours of your team’s time.

+44(0)7948 281571 andy.hastie@invennt.com n

We can send ACANews to your partners and co-directors

As a member you represent your practice. The other principals can most easily enjoy the benefits of membership by signing up for free – they just need their ARB number handy.

Please ask them to go to: https://acarchitects.co.uk/join-the-aca/

It just takes a couple of minutes!

The

Conservation, Heritage, Restoration & Building Journal. Celebrating our 10th anniversary.

Our Journal is distributed on a controlled circulation and subscription basis quarterly to key decision makers in organisations in the world of Conservation, Heritage and Ecclesiastical matters. Conservation & Heritage Journal keeps abreast of what's happening in this important sector of our culture with the latest news and a wide range of informative features written by well respected individuals and organisations in their specialised field of expertise.

With a readership of over 22,000 and growing to a highly targeted audience, Conservation & Heritage Journal is an A4 perfect bound full colour journal published quarterly, this makes it a unique vehicle to advertise specialist skills, products and services so essential to this sector.

Please email for a complimentary copy.

Our website has all our latest news and articles, it also has a 'Search' function where you can search for tradesman, craftsmen and suppliers. In this search you can obtain contact details, examples of work and company history.

INTERWAR British Architecture 1919-39 by Gavin Stamp

Jeremy Melvin writes:

An authoritative survey of British buildings between the wars by the late Gavin Stamp – one of Britain's bestknown architecture critics

INTERWAR British Architecture

1919-39 by GAVIN STAMP

592 Pp | £40 Hardback Profile books

Gavin Stamp, who died in 2017, devoted much of his career as an architectural historian to promoting architects whose reputations had suffered from swings in ideology and fashion, writes Jeremy Melvin.

Many of his favourites practised during the interwar period, though some began their careers before 1900 and several survived into the 1950s.

He was instrumental in founding the Thirties Society (itself a response to an influential exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1979), which has since become the Twentieth Century Society; he personally resurrected the reputation of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott – designer of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and Cambridge University’s central library and much else, who was possibly his favourite and certainly the subject of his most extensive research. He also played a role in the revival of Edwin Lutyens’ reputation after another Hayward exhibition in 1981-2, and, as Private Eye’s architectural correspondent Piloti (where he replaced John Betjeman), became the scourge of unthinking redevelopment of buildings with even the most remote merit, their owners, local and statutory authorities and architects.

Left more or less finished at his death, Interwar: British Architecture 1919-1939 (Profile Books, £40) was prepared for publication by his widow Rosemary Hill (herself a biographer of AWN Pugin), who also contributes a foreword. This book can be

seen as the culmination of Stamp’s oeuvre. In assembling a cast of interesting, sometimes superb but often quirky buildings, it does not disappoint. True to form, it is also provocative and opinionated, often with some justification. He claims Lutyens’ Memorial Arch at Thiepval, a tribute to the British army’s missing on the Somme, is the best piece of British architecture of the period, which is eccentric though not wholly unsupportable. Less plausible are the seemingly endless array of elaborated shaped and constructed new churches in suburbs (often London but also other cities). The best are outstanding, but too often they seem formulaic compositions based on a loose interpretation of the ziggurat form. The urge for ziggurats has unclear origins though may have something to do with the awakening interest in Byzantine architecture, with centralised plans rising to a dome. But many of these churches see, to this reviewer at least, to be the equivalent of the long – and dreadfully tedious –poems that TS Eliot, long after ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘Ash Wednesday’, wrote to fulfil his duty as a convert to Anglicanism. Most of these buildings appear in the chapter ‘Modern Gothic’, though in some examples the gothicness is even less apparent than in Modern Gothic Architecture, a book written by Sir T G Jackson in 1873, which underpinned the ‘Queen Anne revival’ of the late 19th century. Other chapters are Armistice (war memorials); the Grand Manner – monumental classicism; Swedish Grace; Brave New World, in respect of new building

INTERWAR British Architecture 1919-39 by Gavin Stamp

A comprehensively illustrated & refreshing history of inter-war British architecture that looks beyond modernism and gives a fuller picture of a rich and varied era.

British architecture between the wars is most famous for the rise of modernism – the flat roofs, clean lines and concrete of the Isokon flats in Hampstead and the Penguin Pool at London Zoo –but the reality was far more diverse. As the modernists came of age and the traditionalists began to decline, there arose a rich variety of styles and tastes in Britain and across the empire, a variety that reflected the restless zeitgeist of the years before the Second World War.

At the time of his death in 2017, Gavin Stamp, one of Britain's leading architectural critics, was at work on a deeply considered account of British architecture in the interwar period, correcting what he saw as the skewed view of earlier historians who were unable to see past modernism. Beginning with a survey of the modern movement after the armistice, Interwar untangles the threads that link lesser-known movements like the Egyptian

revival with the enduring popularity of the Tudorbethan, to chronicle one of Britain's most dynamic architectural periods. The result is more than an architectural historyit is the portrait of a changing nation.

As an account of the period that still shapes much of Britain's towns and cities, Gavin Stamp's final work is the definitive history of British architecture between the Great War and the Blitz.

Gavin Stamp was an architectural historian and scholar, one of Britain's leading experts on pre-war building and design. 'Brought up in a Tudor bungalow on the Orpington by-pass', as he recalled, he was educated on a scholarship at Dulwich College. Prolific as an author, curator and journalist, as 'Piloti' he wrote Private Eye's 'Nooks & Corners' column from 1978 until his death in 2017.

He was chairman of the 20th-Century Society from 19832007, and wrote more than twenty books on topics including Edwin Lutyens, George Gilbert Scott, brutalism, and telephone boxes.

types like tube stations; Tutankhamen, dealing with the vogue, following the opening of the boy pharaoh’s tomb in 1922, for Egyptiana and its cousin, the English version of Art Deco; the arts and craft diehards in Merrie England; the New Georgians; and a slightly mealy-mouthed analysis of modernism and social architecture in The Shape of Things to Come.

This certainly looks comprehensive. There is much to enjoy, since Stamp writes elegantly, informatively and with wit. His pithy way of recording what his acute eye noticed introduces new ways of looking at buildings that conventional opinion had dismissed. However, at times his enthusiasm carries him away – do we need so many mentions of Sir Giles Scott’s World War I Memorial Chapel at Charterhouse, for instance? I am sure Stamp would have justified this vigorously, if only because to modernists it would superficially have been anathema; his close inspection might reveal greater depth.

Stamp clearly enjoys eclecticism. He relishes Oliver Hill’s undogmatic capability to swing from modernism in a series of houses at Frinton-on-Sea or the Midland Hotel in Morecombe, through the almost Spanish Revivalism (Marylands in Surrey) to the ruggedly magnificent arts-and- crafts-based Cour House in Kintyre. In the same country, similarly rugged but recognisably classical, he admires Robert Lorimer’s Scottish National War Memorial. And of course his dislike for Herbert Baker’s London work, such as the elephantine additions to the Bank of England, draw his ire, though he respects other commissions such as the Winchester College War Memorial. Indeed his comment that Baker’s triumph in getting that commission over his old bete noire Lutyens may have saved the latter a loss of reputation. It is Lutyens whom Stamp admires alongside Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (two of the six architects to receive the Order of Merit, the highest British honour). Stamp’s opinion of the Thiepval Arch has already been mentioned, but the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi (now Rashtrapati Bhavan or President’s Palace) is almost as praised.

In this range, admirable though it is, lies the rub. For all its erudition, this book remains a litany of building descriptions. There is little analysis of the underlying forces that were driving architecture at the time, bar the odd reference to the collective shock and national grief that arose after World War I, or the need to build new churches in expanding suburbs. The major housebuilding programme following that war gets no more than a passing mention.

This period saw a remarkable and often inventive eclecticism, which was almost guillotined at the end by World War II and its effects, one of which was to bring modernism to the fore as a mode for publicly funded architecture. The generation who held sway after 1945 may not have agreed on what modernism was, but they knew they had to present themselves as modernists. How and why this happened may be outside the strict scope of Stamp’s work, but it does beg the question of why one mode, which barely existed before 1939, swept almost all before it after

One partial answer is that the 1930s saw the fulfilment of the RIBA’s policy of compulsory registration for architects. Started in the 1890s, when all the best-known architects opposed it, registration finally became law in 1938. It meant that architects, for the first time, became an identifiable and legally recognisable group to whom a technocratic government, first during World War II and then during post-war reconstruction, could turn to in realising their policies for munitions factories or housing.

Bound up with this is the growth of town planning, again through statutory legislation in the 1930s – generally considered unsatisfactory. Cemented through (second-world) wartime policies established by the Barlow Commission and the Abercrombie Reports, it culminated in the Town & Country Planning Act of 1947. The evil genius behind this was J M Keynes, the leading light on the Macmillan Commission of the early 1930s, who managed to transform conceptions of planning from a function of public

BELOW:

health into a tool of economic policy. Both registration and statutory planning still shape the possibilities and indeed the very existence of the architectural profession. Bound up with this is the growth of town planning, again through statutory legislation in the 1930s – generally considered unsatisfactory. Cemented through (second-world) wartime policies established by the Barlow Commission and the Abercrombie Reports, it culminated in the Town & Country Planning Act of 1947. The evil genius behind this was J M Keynes, the leading light on the Macmillan Commission of the early 1930s, who managed to transform conceptions of planning from a function of public health into a tool of economic policy. Both registration and statutory planning still shape the possibilities and indeed the

very existence of the architectural profession.

Both registration and planning segued into the architectural profession’s collective liking for socialist policies, which guaranteed a stream of post-1945 work on fixed fee scales. Principals of firms like Yorke Rosenberg and Mardall, Powell and Moya, and Howell Killick Partridge and Amis benefited enormously from the public building policy covering housing, education and health.

Exploring this would require another book and an author with another set of skills. It would complement Stamp’s impressive prelude. !"

First published by World Festival of Architecture, with kind consent

RIGHT:

Arnos Grove Underground Station (Charles Holden, Adams Holden & Pearson 1932)

Hoover Factory. Perivale (Wallis, Gilbert & Partners 1932)

New small and simple works appointment agreement out now!

The ACA Professional Services Agreement PSA22 is the refreshed contract for small and domestic works by The Association of Consultant Architects and drafted in collaboration with HCR Hewitsons. With many standard form building related agreements becoming ever more lengthy and complex, the ACA PSA22 seeks in its concise format to provide a fair basis for an agreement between a client and an Architect when it comes to building projects of a simple nature. The Agreement is suitable for both Consumer and Commercial entity Clients.

This contract provides:-

1. An agenda for parties to agree on the core terms of any such arrangement including to clarify the responsibilities of both parties particularly the scope of services to be undertaken

2. The arrangements for managing the Architect’s fees and expenses

3. How the contract can be brought to an end and ultimately how disputes are to be managed.

The cost is £36.00 plus VAT and can be purchased here:https://acarchitects.co.uk/product/professional-servicesagreement-aca-psa22-digital-multi-use/ And ACA Members are entitled to an exclusive 25% discount; £27.00 plus VAT by emailing office@acarchitects.co.uk

Upon receipt of your ACA PSA22 contract order and payment, the ACA will contact you to request the ‘Site Address’ for inclusion within the Agreement and this will be used to generate your PDF ACA PSA22 contract. The ACA PSA22 contract will be a locked, watermarked PDF, the watermark being the ‘Site Address’ and you will not be able to modify this; as per the How To Use Guide PDF which you will also receive upon order confirmation, the only digitally modifiable elements are in Section 3.

ISB Number 978-1-8382857-3-9

Following the launch of the principal designer register, the Health and Safety Executive invited the ACA to meet. Andrew Catto reports

ACA meets HSE

The Building Safety Act was intended to shake the industry out of an attitude of ‘business as usual’ by defining new liabilities for safety all round. Regular readers of ACA News will be aware that along with registration for Building Inspectors a key change is the expanded role of Principal Designer. It’s no coincidence that this job gets the same name as the role established by the CDM Regulations in 1995 and called Principal Designer since 2015. Both roles are essentially to lead and co-ordinate the design team, only now expanded to ensuring that the resulting building ‘as designed’ will comply with all of the Building Regulations and being safe to construct.

The ACA thinks that sounds exactly like the role that the Architect, as leader of the design team, has been doing ever since there have been specialist designers for structure, M&E etc. Under CDM too many architects let the QS take (and take the fees for) this because it didn’t sound ‘creative’, although it was still the architect checking that all the specialists were drawing the same building. Which is what will still happen now. The Principal Designer has to make sure they all design the same Regulations compliant building, and take responsibility for their bit, not just hope someone else will do that later.

In short, the ACA believes that the individual best qualified to be Principal Designer is the one who is co-ordinating the design in any case – you, the Architect. To help your clients come to the same conclusion the ACA set up the ACA Register of (architect) Principal Designers.

The HSE are committed to ensuring this regime works as it should. As part of this the ACA recently met with the HSE department responsible to review our Registe. The HSE support us offering guidance to clients, but they asked that we emphasis that those who list themselves on this (or a rival) register must be able to demonstrate that they know what they are doing, and that above all that Clients (even the one off ones) needs to satisfy themselves of your competence and record why they are appointing you as PD.

To get the job (and the fees) you need the Client to appoint you, in writing and early. The cautious ones should want to see a record of your skill and experience as a team leader. If you haven’t yet written your answer to this question, start now. I was gratified to see how well what I have been doing all along as project architect compares with what is now demanded. You might be happily surprised too. And having this ready shows you know what is required.

A final thought for those members who think that all looks like too much hard work. From now on there WILL be a Principal Designer on almost every project. If it’s not you, then you still have to co-ordinate the design team as you always did, on top of which you will have to provide the extra paperwork that the PD should demand, you will have to a guarantee that your design complies – and all for no extra fee because your client is paying someone else as PD. Or you could make sure you are Principal Designer in name as well as effort and get paid for this. n

ACA CPD events

September

ACA Annual General Meeting 4th September at 6pm over Zoom

London Planning & Development Forum

10th September 2pm at Assael, Putney email: planninginlondon@mac.com

October

UK Construction Week - Birmingham 1st - 3rd October - NEC Birmingham

Cambridge University Land Society

Minimass printed bridge demo site visit Norfolk see www.culandsoc.com/ events

ACA Drinks Networking Event

Date & venue to be advised

South East Consortium - SEC2-24

Wednesday 16th October - London Stadium, Stratford

November

London Build 2024 Expo & London Build Fire & Security Expo 20th - 21st November - London Olympia

ACA office closed for Christmas & New Year from Wednesday 25th through to Thursday 2nd January

Please keep an eye out for emails from the ACA Office inviting you to further webinars and other events

ACA Forms of Appointment

The ACA publishes two architectural appointments. The highly successful SFA 2012 – Standard Form of Agreement for the Appointment of an Architect – which has now been refreshed and launched as SFA24.

Secondly, our updated contract of architectural appointment the PSA22 which is for small and domestic works. Available only in a digital format £36 plus VAT, however, pricing includes cover copies for both parts of the agreement.

Both contracts are now available in unlimited copies on subscription either individually or in our combination package; see article in this ACANews.

Download the worked example of SFA 2012 edition (with updates) as a ‘taster’ from here: https://tinyurl.com/ 1mt7tuf6

ACA PUBLICATIONS

GO TO: https://acarchitects.co.uk/shop/ and http://allianceforms.co.uk

The ACA publishes a number of key documents used extensively by the building professions and within the industry. They are divided into the general sections below for clarity.

The ACA recommends the following as best practice guidance: incorporation of terms by reference

1. Ensure you complete and sign an appropriate and current Standard Form of Agreement / Contract at the outset. This should prevent misunderstandings on what has been agreed.

2. Agree the scope of services within the Agreement / Contract with the Client. Clarify what is included and the cost. This should avoid the risk of unlimited liability

3. Consider the effect of any proposed amendments to the Standard Form

ACA Suite of Partnering Contracts, PPC2000, TPC2005 and SPC2000 and related Guidance

The current publications are:

PPC2000 (Amended 2013) – ACA Standard Form of Contract for Project Partnering

TPC2005 (Amended 2008) – ACA Standard Form of Contract for Term Partnering

SPC2000 (Amended 2008) – ACA Standard Form of Specialist Contract for Project Partnering

SPC2000 Short From (Issued 2010) – ACA Standard Form of Specialist Contract for Project Partnering

STPC2005 (Issued 2010) – ACA Standard Form of Specialist Contract for Term Partnering Guide to ACA Project Partnering Contracts

PPC2000 and SPC2000

Guide to ACA Term Partnering Contracts

TPC2005 and STPC2005

Introduction to Pricing Under PPC2000

Introduction to Pricing Under TPC2005

PPC(S) – Scottish Supplement to PPC2000

If you are starting a new building project, you should use the latest versions of each contract which contain incorporated amendments.

There is a PPC2000 dedicated website at www.ppc2000.co.uk for further information on ACA/ACE suite of partnering contracts. To learn more about the range of projects that have been procured using PPC2000 and TPC2005 you can download the free publication which features 28 case studies: 10 Years of PPC2000

ACA Suite of Alliance Contracts

FAC-1 and TAC-1

and ensure you take appropriate legal advice. Avoid jeopardising good working relationships.

4. Ensure all terms of any agreement / contract are clearly set out and that none are “incorporated by reference” as these will not appear within what you sign. If necessary ensure terms of agreement are signed separately. Don’t waste time and avoid costly disputes

The entire publications catalogue is available to view on the PPublications Shop page at https://acarchitects.co.uk/shop/with a short description of each, costs and their ISBN numbers.

The current publications are:

FAC-1 - Framework Alliance Contract

TAC-1 – Term Alliance Contract

Visit the dedicated website at www.allianceforms.co.uk for further information and detailed guidance.

ACA Forms of Architectural Appointment

The ACA publishes two architectural appointments.

The highly successful SFA 2012 - Standard Form of Agreement for the Appointment of an Architect which has now been refreshed and launched as SFA24. Secondly, our updated contract of architectural appointment; the PSA22 which is for small and domestic works. Available only in a digital format £36 plus VAT, however, pricing includes cover copies for both parts of the agreement.

Both contracts are now available in unlimited copies on subscription either individually or in our combination package; see article in this ACANews.

A full sample ‘worked’ copy of the ACA SFA 2008 edition (with updates) appointment document is available to view free on the Taster pages.

Download the worked example from here: https://tinyurl.com/ 1mt7tuf6

Other building related Contracts and documents

The ACA produces other documents including: ACA Form of Building Agreement

ACA form of Subcontract

ACA Certificates for use with ACA Building Agreements.

Architects, Chartered Architects and Architectural Derivatives – A guide to who should help with your building project: To help your clients understand the difference between architects, architectural technicians, architectural technologists and other classifications of design professionals, the ACA in collaboration with the ARB, CIAT and RIAS have produced an information leaflet which can be downloaded from Consumer information leaflet DOWNLOAD version.

Tasters

More complete descriptions and some ‘Tasters’ of the main ACA documents may be viewed on the ‘Tasters’ pages. Order documents via the website on the Order Form at https://acarchitects.co.uk/shop/

If you are ordering more than five copies of any publications, or are ordering from overseas, please contact us at office@acarchitects.co.uk to arrange for a bespoke shipping quote and discounted costs on the publications.

Stephen Walker - Stephen F Walker Chartered Architect

John Thompson - ISA Architecture & Design

Patricia Forero - The Architect Studio Ltd

Nigel Holt - GJR Architects Ltd

Jonathan Pile - The Oval Partnership Architecture Ltd

Paul Dean - Studio Ark

Peter Humphreys - HTC Architects

Roger Crimlis - Roger Crimlis Architect

Cristina Lanz Azcarate - Atelier EURA

Sam Handscombe - RM Architects Ltd (T/A RM_A)

Timothy Godsmark - HTC Architects

Andrew Mortimer - RM Architects Ltd (T/A RM_A)

Nimesh Patel - RM Architects Ltd (T/A RM_A)

Mark McGechan - RM Architects Ltd (T/A RM_A)

Sandesh Raj - RM Architects Ltd (T/A RM_A)

John Alexander - Alexander Design

Jonathon Williams - Sketchproposal Limited

Pablo Lambrechts - L+ Architects

Jonathan Mason - BSB Architecture

Nana Ama Astra - Matter Architecture

Stuart Taylor - Race Cottam Associates

Paul Stanton - Guy Taylor AssociatesSean Albuquerque - ABQ Studio

William Hogan-O’Neill - Architect Knowhow Practice

Lukasz Gruszczynski - MDLR Architects

Carlos Toran Piquer - BRL Design

Tzeh Bin Cheong - Shepheard Epstein Hunter

Simon Pearson - Howells

Shirley Hamill - Rio Architects

Richard Townend - GWP Architecture Limited

Norman ONeill - Lyons Sleeman Hoare

Alda Coelho - Studio COeSA Ltd

Mark Watkins - Clear Future Architecture Ltd.

John Barbuk - Red Door Architects Ltd

Roger Evans - Roger Evans Architects Ltd

Kevin Sinfield - A4 Architecture (UK) Limited

Sam Parnell-Leach - A4 Architecture UK Limited

Reza Parizi - Price Parizi LLP

Gemma McConnell - Gibberd Architects Limited

Welcome to new members ACA is growing

In order for the ACA to have more of an effective voice and representation when providing Government consultations and lobbying parliament, we are always looking for new members.

Membership is FREE so do spread the word to colleagues. and be sure to follow us on (NEW!): ACA@groups.io and LinkedIn The Association of Consultant Architects