Fit for purpose: making the industry competent

Making sure firms and workers are competent to carry out construction projects is one of the biggest post-Grenfell initiatives in the sector. CN investigates the progress to date

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Dame Judith Hackitt’s seminal report Building a Safer Future highlighted a construction industry that had failed on safety. She found an ignorance of regulations and guidance, an indifference to quality, a lack of clarity about responsibility, and inadequate oversight by regulators. One of her major recommendations for improvement was the development of industry competence, “to ensure that there are people across all key design and construction roles with the relevant skills for the job” and that they are readily identifiable on projects.

Separately, in the aftermath of the fire, the government formed an industry response group to advise on immediate steps to improve safety. What followed has been one of the biggest and longest-running projects in the construction industry, despite it having gone relatively under the radar. And yet its work is set to affect every single person working in the sector.

Agonising

“If we go back to that immediate period post-Grenfell, I think everyone was in shock and everyone was saying ‘what can we do?’,” recalls Construction Products Association (CPA) chief executive Peter Caplehorn. The CPA is one of the bodies that was part of the industry response group from the outset, alongside Build UK and the Construction Industry Council (CIC).

Members of the group were surprised to find few available experts who could assess the safety of existing building stock, Caplehorn says, which led to one of the initial realisations that competence needed to be addressed. Hackitt’s report galvanised this attitude. “We came together and really the question was, ‘how many competent people do we have in the industry to look at the current situation, analyse what potential problems we’ve got and guide everyone to sort it out?’,” he says.

“Nobody in the industry should be in any doubt that the main regulator and the product regulator are there to see that the regulations are followed”

Peter Capelthorn, Construction Products Association

This led to the formation of the Competence Steering Group (CSG), with Caplehorn serving as one of its deputy chairs under the leadership of CIC chief executive Graham Watts. Hundreds of people across nearly as many organisations have worked on the initiative since the CSG was set up in 2018. Twelve working groups were established to set or enhance competence standards across different areas ranging from procurement and project management to the management of occupied buildings (see box, right). The task was mammoth and the CSG’s work would affect the roles of more than three million people who work in the built environment.

New standards

Caplehorn recalls an “agonising” initial process to come up with a definition of competence. By October 2020, when the CSG report Setting the Bar was published, the definition of competence was: “The combination of skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours that enable a person to undertake responsibilities and perform activities to a recognised standard on a regular basis.”

Kate Milford, director of Milford & Marah consultants, advises on competence across different industries. She got involved with the working group at the request of the Association for Specialist Fire Protection, to offer outside expertise on competence at a time when there were discussions about how best to proceed. She points out that competence had previously been familiar to the sector under a definition from the Health and Safety Executive as “the combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge that a person has and their ability to apply them to perform a task safely” – using broadly similar language to the CSG.

Also, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM) placed a duty to ensure a competent person was appointed to help companies meet their health and safety duties. “The idea that the construction industry should be doing something with competence has been around for
a long time,” Milford says. “What hasn’t been there, in my opinion, is a driver to do something about it. After Grenfell there was a really strong lever to say, ‘OK, now is the time where we actually have to do something.’”

Contrasts

Competent person schemes have existed throughout different parts of the industry for decades, yet they only covered a fraction of roles and they differed in their scope and requirements.

The CSG’s working groups needed to cover a range of roles, with different parts of the profession such as architects having well-established systems, and others – like building safety managers – beginning from scratch with no existing recognised accreditation.

The working group for installers has been the largest and most complex, containing several different trades with many different competence schemes. Trades such as domestic plumbing, drylining, roofing, rainscreen cladding, fire-stopping specialists, and fire detection and alarms are all under the remit of the same competence working group.

“The idea that the construction industry should be doing something with competence has been around for a long time. What hasn’t been there… is a driver to do something about it”

Kate Milford, Milford & Marah

Milford says: “What came up from… discussions [with the working group] was that there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that would be suitable. Because of the number of specialisms and the different shape they take in the built environment there was a need to take flexible approaches for the subsectors that sit within that.”

The challenges of such a diverse grouping was highlighted in the Setting the Bar report. It noted that among installers especially, the “ad hoc design” by individuals can have a big impact on safety. How this can be captured in an overarching compliance framework has been a tricky question.

Iain McIlwee, chief executive of trade body the Finishes & Interiors Sector (FIS), has been involved in both the installers and products working groups. He says the ad hoc design element is complicated because it raises questions about where responsibilities lie, making it challenging in both the framework and in day-to-day practice. “Lawyers have reacted quicker than anybody else [on this element],” he says. “We have seen more onerous terms put into contracts and inconsistencies in terms of what people are expected to do.”

Pilot schemes were set up for six of the trades within the installers group to examine the picture. A consultation on standards for fire-stopping competence is expected to be opened imminently. Nevertheless, owing to its complexity, the installers’ competence framework will be the last piece of work to be completed under the CSG.

McIlwee has also been involved in the working group for construction products, which was led by CPA digital and policy manager Hanna Clarke. The working group produced a white paper in September 2022 on its recommendations for competence.

“It was definitely simpler [than for installers] – there is a more unified approach to how products are brought to market. It’s not without its challenges but it’s simpler to put a framework in place around businesses that are more consistent in the way they operate and the way that they’re procured,” McIlwee says.

Roll-out

If the challenge of developing the competence frameworks has been difficult in some cases, what follows is the equally challenging task of rolling them out to the entire industry.

For Construction Leadership Council (CLC) co-chair and Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds, the key elements are skills cards, accreditation and training curricula. “What we’re trying to do from the CLC’s perspective is not boil the ocean. We’re trying to create a system where it’s self-auditing, self-managing,” he says.

Apprenticeship standards need to be updated every three years through the government-funded Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, allowing the industry to ensure those being trained are learning the latest competence standards. Reynolds says: “In time that will create that long-term sustainable system – the challenge is how do you embed it in continuing professional development, and this is where the institutions and the trade bodies have a real role to play.”

Trade bodies that offer accreditation, such as the Electrical Contractors’ Association and National Federation of Roofing Contractors, are important for this part of the work, he says.

Milford warns that company culture is as important as education in ensuring correct behaviours are followed. “You can have as many competent people in an organisation as you like, [but] if that organisation isn’t promoting safety and encouraging people to use their competence then that’s where it can all fall down,” she says.

The stick

A coercive approach is also being applied. The Building Safety Act 2022’s gateway two – set to replace the building control stage of planning – requires principal designers and contractors of high-rise or high-risk developments to show that their projects meet competence requirements.

McIlwee notes that this creates a financial incentive to improve competence. “We’re going to have to make sure that main contractors are working with specialist subcontractors that are able to demonstrate that they have effective competency plans in place or potentially they’re going to hit the buffer at the gateway. It’s going to have to be driven through the supply chain by effective procurement,” he says.

There will also be a wider responsibility for accountable people on any project to be able to show the regulator they considered the competence of their workforce. This can be done by demonstrating that they assessed whether a contractor or supplier met the competencies set out in the frameworks developed by the CSG.

“Nobody in the industry should be in any doubt that both the main regulator and the product regulator are there to see that the regulations are followed in future, that they have powers and they will be using them,” Caplehorn says.

Yet with thousands of companies operating outside the scope of trade or professional bodies, will it be possible to reach everyone? “I think it’s key even for the laggards to realise that unlike in previous eras they will be found out because there will be whistleblowing,” Caplehorn says. “Our members want a level playing field. Anybody not playing by the rules will be highlighted and, I predict, dealt with by the regulators.”