Page 5 - Judith Hackitt News Today

To identify any potential weaknesses in the system and make recommendations for improvement, the government has commissioned an independent review of the system for testing construction products and has appointed Paul Morrell OBE and Anneliese Day QC to lead it. The independent review will undertake a critical assessment of the system for testing and certifying construction products. It will examine how the current system can be strengthened, to provide confidence that construction pr...

By Tom Lowe2021-02-24T07:00:00+00:00 Post-Grenfell reforms outlined in BBA safety standards consultation would see inspectors checking products already on market The UK’s biggest issuer of construction products certifications has proposed a shake-up of testing practices which could see unannounced testing of building products already on the market. The British Board of Agrément (BBA), which issues certificates on building products including cladding and insulation, has proposed testing ran...

By Tom Lowe2021-02-23T06:00:00+00:00 Shake-up outlined in new BBA consultation on safety standards The UK’s biggest issuer of construction products certifications has proposed a shake-up of testing practices which could see unannounced testing of building products already on the market. The British Board of Agrément (BBA), which issues certificates on building products including cladding and insulation, has proposed testing randomly selected materials at regular intervals. Source: Shutters...

Hackitt report said position should be requirement of all high-risk projects

By James Morris 2021-02-18T05:00:00+00:00 Will the new regulator have the teeth it needs? And what about product testing? A new construction products national regulator is imminent. Housing minister Robert Jenrick announced the new tsar’s creation following what he described as “deeply disturbing allegations of malpractice by some construction product manufacturers and their employees, and of the weaknesses of the present product testing regime” in evidence given to the Grenfell inq...

  At the end of last year, I participated in a panel session at the 2020 HOMES UK conference on the crisis in the professional indemnity (PI) insurance market. The panel was chaired by Andy Tookey of construction consultants Baily Garner. There was general agreement that in time huge swathes of construction would either become uninsurable for PI or else would not have access to the PI market at “commercially reasonable” rates. I wrote in Building about this problem a year ago, and the pi...

New Chief Inspector of Buildings appointed to lead Building Safety Regulator Peter Baker has been appointed to the new Chief Inspector of Buildings role, which will head up the establishment of and lead the new Building Safety Regulator. Peter Baker will take up the post with immediate effect, and is currently the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Director of Building Safety and Construction, having been with the organisation for over 30 years. The HSE was asked to establish a new Building...

Procurement is one of the biggest questions the construction industry at large is facing I will not pretend to be an expert on public procurement and its pitfalls but I am aware that one of the difficulties facing new and small practices in the UK are the pre-qualification requirements inherent in the OJEU process, which largely choke off their ability to bid for public sector projects. I am also aware that procurement is one of the biggest questions the construction industry at large is facing...

Insurance crisis: a ticking timebomb for architects In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, professional indemnity insurance premiums have soared while exclusions have ballooned, an AJ survey shows, with 90% of practices worrying that this could threaten their businesses. Will Ing reports Advertisement ‘With the effect of Covid-19 on turnover, any further premium increases will make our business commercially unviable,’ one North West-based architect says. These are fears shared by an alarming...

RIBA and RIAS make bids for lead competency role Source:&nbsp Shutterstock The RIBA and RIAS have made bids to take lead roles in delivering CPD to ensure architects’ professional competency as part of the shake-up of the Architects Act 1997 In response to consultation to proposed amendments to the act, first announced in the draft Building Safety Bill in July, the two institutes said they should head up the mandatory monitoring and assessment of architects’ competence – and not the profe...