Page 10 - Judith Hackitt News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

  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 picture has not improved. Andy Tookey explained that this problem was not just associated with the Gre...

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 Safety Regulator by the Government following recommendations in the ‘Building a Safer Future’ r...

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 – so this discussion is timely.  I was recently chatting with a colleague with a few more years ...

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 number of architects, according to the AJ’s study. As a partner in a London practice says: ‘PII...

RIBA and RIAS make bids for lead competency role Source:  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 profession’s regulator, the ARB. Advertisement The overhaul of architects’ regulation follows in the ...