The Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group – representing the largest value sector in UK construction - is urging the Government to ensure that the Regulator has wide enough powers to deal with all matters affecting building safety.

In her report, Building a Safer Future (published May 2018), Dame Judith Hackitt stated that building safety was being compromised by poor procurement processes (seeking lowest price outcomes) and adversarial contractual/payment practices that require small firms at the end of construction supply chains to pick up all project-related risks.

Dame Judith called for a collaborative partnership between building clients and their delivery teams as well as fair treatment for all suppliers.

SEC Group is calling on the Government to give specific powers to the Regulator:

• to draw up a code of ethical commercial behaviours and impose sanctions where the code is breached, and
• to promote procurement decisions based upon team-working (including all key suppliers) from the outset of project design and planning processes.

For some years SEC Group has been urging governments to pilot insurance-backed alliancing that ensures team-working and the adoption of robust risk management processes to address all project risks including those relating to building safety (see briefing here and in notes which provides more detail).

SEC Group’s chief executive Professor Rudi Klein said that he was encouraged by Housing Secretary the Robert Jenrick’s commitment to delivering the biggest change in building safety for a generation.

He added:?“Effective measures to address building safety demand a fundamental change in construction procurement processes and commercial behaviours.  This has been said and repeated over many years but unless the promised legislation provides the Regulator with the necessary powers and the resources to do the job properly, Mr Jenrick’s expectation of transformational change is likely to be illusory.”