How to Keep the Golden Thread Intact

For social housing providers, one of the most significant outcomes of the Building Safety Act is the requirement for a ‘golden thread’ of fire safety information for high risk buildings.

The aim of the golden thread is to have an easily accessible and continuously updated repository of fire safety-related information about the building. The golden thread will help responsible people understand the building, including its construction and materials, so they can make informed decisions about how to keep the building and its occupants safe.

When the provisions of the act are fully implemented, new buildings will have passed through a series of gateways during the development lifecycle. The regulator will have to be satisfied at each stage that there are no building safety issues and that the information provided is adequate. This process applies to lower as well as high risk buildings.

Digital Records

When the building is handed over it will come with a complete digital record that includes plans, dimensions, materials, specifications and suppliers, along with operating and maintenance, and health and safety manuals.

The accountable person will then be responsible for keeping information up to date for high risk buildings. A key issue will be deciding who the accountable person should be and what experience and qualifications they need.

Social housing providers will need to consider updating procurement and contracting rules to assign specific safety responsibilities to designers and contractors to ensure that schemes pass smoothly through the relevant gateways. If, for example, the regulator requires changes to the design before the building can be built or occupied, who picks up the bill?

BIM

Although BIM isn’t likely to be mandated it’s probable that much of the information will be created and held in a BIM environment. It makes commercial sense to maintain and update fire safety information in this environment after handover. This could be an area where providers and their supply chains for compliance checks and repairs and maintenance may need to upskill.

There’s also the question of the existing high risk buildings that will need to have their golden thread created. These won’t have passed through the same development gateways and may not have a comprehensive set of fire safety information held digitally. In most cases it will be more manageable to maintain this data in the same environment for both existing and new buildings.

The golden thread fits into the wider compliance picture. Some existing inspections will fall into the scope, which means that social housing providers should review how they can consolidate all compliance data within one environment to avoid duplication and potential gaps.

For more information about Osborne’s approach to compliance data management contact Alex McLean [email protected] or take a look at our resource centre.