Fire safety legislation : A multi-billion-pound opportunity to improve our industry

This paper details the billions of pounds involved in complying with the building safety legislation that is passing through the parliamentary process. This legislation is designed to deliver a radically new building safety system for the future. While examining what will be required from the legislation, we discuss the future opportunities that a radically new system brings. We focus on the Building Safety Bill that will bring the 53 recommendations from Dame Judith Hackitt’s report ‘Building a Safer Future’1 into law. We consider how the ‘golden thread’ way of working, as outlined in Dame Hackitt’s report, will be central to complying with the new legislation and how BIM using the ISO standards is the framework for the golden thread. We make the case that there are opportunities to use this new way of working, which is being developed for building safety, to simultaneously achieve operational excellence by significantly improving how we understand and manage buildings, so we are in control of design, build and operate phases. We further set out how being in control of buildings’ information can improve the quality of new builds, reduce maintenance and operations costs, and ultimately lead to whole life cycle building cost reductions, as well as delivering a better service for residents.