Explainer: How to comply competently with the Building Safety Act

The Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) strengthens the protections aﬀorded to occupants of residential buildings, care homes and hospitals and imposes specific requirements on engineers working across the entire infrastructure sector, not just those involved in the design of higher-risk buildings (HRBs).

The act, informed by the Hackitt review of building safety and ﬁre regulations after the Grenfell Tower fire, brought in a package of new measures and a toughened enforcement regime to address the safety of the occupants of HRBs. It represents a chance for engineers to learn from past systemic failures and ensure that they never recur.

This explainer covers the main legislative changes and where these are likely to aﬀect the work of civil engineers. It highlights the new obligation on engineers involved in the design and construction of higher-risk buildings to demonstrate their practical and professional competence.

Why the legislation was needed

The 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy was the UK’s deadliest structural fire since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil platform disaster, killing 72 people (credit: iStock/palliki)

The BSA was enacted to make buildings safe for the people who use them.

It is a wide-ranging reform of building safety legislation enacted in response to the independent review led by Dame Judith Hackitt after the 2017 Grenfell Tower ﬁre, in which 72 people died. While the act covers England, some provisions extend to Wales and Scotland.

The legislation is designed to ﬁll a gap the Hackitt review identiﬁed in the Building Regulations 2010 and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. It aims to put occupants at the heart of building safety by:

Deﬁning roles and responsibilities more clearly
Emphasising competent adherence to the Building Regulations
Creating a digitally stored and carefully indexed “golden thread” of information that acts as an archive of construction record.

The BSA clariﬁes who is accountable for building safety throughout the life of a “higher-risk building” (HRB). It deﬁnes an HRB as a building that is at least seven storeys or 18m high and “contains at least two residential units”. It should be noted that hospitals and care homes that meet the height criterion are considered HRBs only during their design and construction, because other safety frameworks apply once they are occupied.

Although the act focuses on the safe design, construction, modification, maintenance and management of HRBs, its aim is to change the culture of the construction industry by establishing a more eﬀective regulatory and responsibility framework that promotes competent professional practice wherever building safety is concerned. It therefore aﬀects construction industry engineers across all disciplines.

The act’s main measures

The act provides new statutory responsibilities for the main parties involved in the design, construction and management of buildings (credit: iStock/okeyphotos)

The key provisions introduced in the BSA are outlined below.

A new Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to serve as the building control authority for HRBs. In England, the BSR has been part of the Health and Safety Executive, but it’s set to become an independent public body in 2026.

New statutory responsibilities for the main parties involved in the design, construction and management of buildings, not just HRBs. Roles covered include those of Principal Designer (PD) and Principal Contractor (PC). Confusingly, these two titles already exist under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM) too. The BSA has created its own separate roles of Principal Designer and Principal Contractor for projects that fall under its remit. The duties attached to these diﬀer from those of their CDM equivalents because they relate to the safety of a building’s occupants rather than the operatives that construct it. The BSA requires that Duty-Holders must demonstrate that those they commission to act as PC and PD are competent to do so. Where an individual or organisation holds the title Client, PC or PD they will also be known as Duty-Holder. It is possible for the same person or organisation to hold both the BSA and CDM versions of the PD and PC roles, as long as they are competent to do so. PDs must demonstrate compliance of the design against the functional requirements stated in the Building Regulations.

Tougher penalties for any rule-breakers, particularly building owners who fail to “demonstrate that they have eﬀective, proportionate measures in place to manage safety risks”.

A three-stage gateway approach, which applies to new builds, modifications, extensions and refurbishments of buildings that are classified as HRBs in the BSA. The main features of the three stages are:

Gateway one – the submission of a ﬁre statement as part of the planning application

Gateway two – mandatory Building Regulations approval for the project before permanent construction works start onsite. The information required to pass through this gateway includes:

Competency statements for the PD and PC
A statement specifying the standards and design methods used in designing the building and explaining why the chosen approach is appropriate
Statements on how the building will be controlled during construction to ensure compliance

Gateway three – Record of construction demonstrating compliance with the design intent and the provision of the "golden thread" construction record information to provide a completion certiﬁcate for the HRB.

A duty on the Principal Accountable Person (PAP) to provide and maintain a safety case report for the HRB. This report is based on a safety case model, which considers what measures are in place within the design of the HRB when subject to fire spread and/or structural failure. The report must identify the safety risks, explain how these have been assessed and show that all reasonable preventive and mitigation steps are being taken that are described in the safety case model. The PAP is a new statutory role that applies to the person or organisation that owns the building. It may also apply to the person or organisation responsible for maintaining common areas such as corridors. Events that could occur to an HRB are deﬁned in the BSA as the following:

The spread of ﬁre
A structural failure

Every construction industry engineering specialist discipline involved in the design, construction, operation, modification and maintenance of the HRB should be feeding into the safety case model for it. This could include highways, drainage, water supply, external works, and sanitation, in addition to structural, building services and cladding. Any designer whose contribution might create a risk during construction or refurbishment must show that they have identiﬁed that risk and demonstrate how it is being managed via preventative or mitigation measures.

The use of a golden thread of information. This must be created and maintained throughout the life of the building. The government’s Building Regulations Advisory Committee deﬁnes the golden thread as “both the information that allows you to understand a building and the steps needed to keep both the building and people safe, now and in the future”. The contents of the golden thread must be clear, comprehensive and easy to retrieve. Duty-Holders and PAPs are not expected to understand every technical detail – only to ensure that the data is accurate and accessible to construction industry professionals who may need it later to access assess the HRB.

Note that all building construction works must comply with the BSA. Non-HRBs, often referred to as outside-scope buildings or OSBs, still need to have the Duty-Holder demonstrate that they have commissioned competent PDs and PCs and that the design is compliant with the functional requirements of the Building Regulations. They do not, however, have to undergo the three-stage gateway process.

The importance of professional competence

The Engineering Council has developed an independent peer-reviewed method of proving competence (credit: iStock/sturti)

At the heart of the BSA is an obligation on all people and organisations concerned with design and construction to be competent to ensure compliance with the Building Regulations 2010. This obligation has been enshrined in an amendment to the regulations so that it applies to every type of building work – even the smallest residential alteration.

In the case of an HRB, the Duty-Holder via the PD must provide evidence that the key people involved in its design and construction or modification are competent for the project to pass through gateway two.

The PD requires all of the designers to prove their competence. They do this by submitting documentation, usually in the form of a CV and evidence of relevant project experience. The Engineering Council has developed an independent peer-reviewed method of proving competence. This register of engineering specialists helps demonstrate their competence to work on HRBs in a safe and ethical manner. Registered engineering specialists have been assessed against the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment Contextualised for Higher-Risk Buildings (UK-SPEC HRB), which was published in 2025. Set by the Engineering Council, this standard is based on BS 8670-1, a code of practice entitled Competence frameworks for building safety – core criteria.

The new UK-SPEC HRB register is aimed at engineers who are professionally qualified, or who meet the criteria to become professionally qualified, and who work on the structural design and delivery of HRBs. There are different levels of registration for chartered engineers, incorporated engineers and engineering technicians.

The Engineering Council has licensed both the ICE and the Institution of Structural Engineers to assess candidates for the structures discipline of the register. The ICE’s website provides full details of the eligibility criteria, competency requirements and application process for joining the register.

While the register applies only to engineers working on HRBs, BS 8670-1 recommends competency criteria for engineers who work on all types of buildings.

The ICE is also considering whether there should be specialist registers for other higher-risk categories of infrastructure as part of an action plan to improve safety risk management across the industry. You can read more about this and other measures in its 2025 Building Safeguards report.