What the Building Safety Act 2023 (BSA) regulations update means for you

The Building Safety Act 2023 covers a lot of ground, and from a professional perspective it’s all about due diligence and taking responsibility for the advice you give as designers and contractors. Here’s our summary of the key points for businesses planning to review their workspace moving forward.

The Building Safety Act lays out new requirements through secondary legislation and reforms the existing legislation in order to clarify how buildings should be built, maintained and kept safe. This applies to all buildings, and there are extra rules for what are deemed to be Higher-Risk Buildings, or HRBs. They apply to all building work to which Building Regulations 2010 apply.

What are the new dutyholder roles and responsibilities?

The Act implements a new range of duties to be undertaken by any individual or organisation which commissions, designs, builds or renovates buildings to ensure that they maintain compliance with Building Regulations. The client must appoint, in writing, a designer with control over the design work as the principal designer (BSA PD) for the purposes of these regulations, and a contractor (BSA PC) with control over the building work as the principal contractor for the purposes of these regulations. These roles are also referred to as the principal dutyholders.

Whether a designer or other dutyholder, the Act requires the post holder to collaborate, share information and manage their own competence and that of their team. Under the new definitions, the client is the person responsible for commissioning the building work. They have overall control over the project and, therefore, it is appropriate that they are ultimately responsible for sharing and controlling the flow of information.

How can we help?

We design interior schemes up to RIBA Stage 3 (Spatial Co-ordination) and will ensure that any advice/designs we provide have been seen and approved, in principle, by an Approved Building Control Inspector (AI). We can provide a letter of comfort for tenderers once the Stage 3 is complete or we can provide a tracker, from the AI, so that areas yet to be developed are flagged early and can be allowed for within the tender. We would normally expect the role of BSA PD to be passed on to a reputable Design and Build Contractor who would adopt the role of both BSA PD to Stage 6 (Handover) as well as BSA PC.

An overview of the new Building Control regime is available here.

For Matt Brookes, Associate Design Partner at The Workspace Consultants, these updates to the regulations can only be of benefit to office designers, construction companies and clients alike. ‘Here at The Workspace Consultants we’ve always focused not only on delivering creative office design solutions for our clients but also on ensuring that our proposals comply with all necessary standards and regulations,’ says Matt. ‘With these latest updates to the Building Regulations we know that all designers and project managers will need to provide more detail, and with our team’s experience we know that it’s an area in which we’re well-equipped to deliver. We’d encourage anyone thinking of either moving to new premises or reworking their office space to contact us for an initial conversation so that their project gets off to the best possible start.’

The Workspace Consultants offer office design and project management for clients in Cambridge, London and Manchester. If you’re moving premises or refreshing your existing space, call us on 01223 656111 or complete our enquiry form to discuss how we can assist.