SAFETY-CRITICAL ELEMENTS TO BE AWARE OF

THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF BUILDING (CIOB) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have jointly published a free guide to managing safety-critical elements (SCEs) in building construction, aimed at both their members and the wider built environment sector.

The Guide to Managing Safety-Critical Elements in Building

Construction helps to identify high-risk elements in and around buildings. It outlines systems that should be adopted to ensure that SCEs are properly incorporated and will serve as an important tool to ensure good practice and deliver safe, high-quality buildings.

The joint guide recognises the cross-industry need for a rigorous and structured approach to the design, construction and inspection of safety-critical building elements. It highlights elements that, if omitted or installed incorrectly, can pose significant risk to people in and around buildings, including:

• Safe means of escape for occupants and access for firefighters

• Combustibility of cladding and insulating materials

• Effective fire compartmentation including smoke control,

• firestopping, cavity-barriers and fire doors

• Structural integrity of masonry cladding panels and the proper

• incorporation of necessary brick accessories into them including

• fixings, bed-joint reinforcement, wind posts and ties

• Structural integrity of balconies

CIOB past president Paul Nash, who chaired the Safety-Critical Elements working group, said: “At its heart, this guide is about ensuring that the buildings we create are safe for those who use them. That means ensuring every element that goes into a building is designed and installed correctly and this is independently verified before a building is occupied. The guide is another step towards creating a safer built environment.”

Former president of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA) and current member of RIBA's Expert Advisory Group on Fire Safety, Professor John Cole CBE, said: “This guide is a spur to the industry. We have seen much evidence showing how poorly safety-critical elements have been installed in too many buildings. We all have to stand up, be serious and take appropriate responsibility. We want to push the industry to ensure that, on every project, all SCEs that could potentially impact the safety of future building users are properly designed, installed and inspected, with supporting evidence of compliance.”

The Guide to Managing Safety-Critical Elements in Building Construction is available to download from the CIOB website. q buildings in England are covered by the new regulator, set up in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy and officially launched earlier this year.

BSR is an independent body set up by the Building Safety Act 2022 and part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its launch is the biggest change in building safety for a generation.

HSE’s director of building safety Philip White said: “We’re pleased with the early response from industry, but I urge owners and managers to act now and register their buildings if they haven’t already done so. This is a legal requirement they will have to meet by the end of September.

“Registration is a crucial part of the new regime and our efforts to ensure residents of high-rise buildings feel protected and safe in their homes.”

High-rise residential buildings that are at least 18 metres in height or have seven or more floors containing at least two residential units must be registered with BSR.

Information on how to register and what details are required can be found on Gov.uk. Building owners or managers must provide the number of floors at or above ground level, height in metres, the number of residential units and the year of construction.

Guidance on the key building information (KBI) that will also need to be recorded under the new building safety laws has also been published on Gov.uk. The KBI registration element will then be added to the HRB online registration portal later this summer, allowing sufficient time for owners and managers of buildings to submit their KBI by the end of September. q