Building safety: Industry Safety Steering Group hails progress on Building Safety Manager role

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The Industry Safety Steering Group (ISSG), the body responsible for scrutinising the construction industry’s progress towards culture change and implementing building safety on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has published its latest report.

Topics covered in the report include building ownership and management, competence, building control, commissioning and procurement, standard contracts, and culture change and collaboration.

While highlighting many areas of good practice, the report also finds that industry needs to make further changes and progress ahead of the building safety legislation. ISSG raised particular concerns about the ‘huge challenge’ of competence in the sector and the ‘lack of widespread, proactive leadership’ on building safety.

Amongst those the report singles out for praise is Working Group 8 (WG8), the group responsible for developing the competence framework for the Building Safety Manager (BSM) and for which IWFM has provided the secretariat.

IWFM’s Head of Policy, Sofie Hooper, was one of the WG8 members who recently presented an update to ISSG Chair Dame Judith Hackitt on the considerable progress it had made. The report states: ‘ISSG was pleased by WG8’s proactive development of an assessment tool for industry members to immediately use to identify gaps and invest resources in upskilling the existing workforce to meet the upcoming regulatory requirement.’