Speaking at the House of Commons launch of a new clients’ guide to the Building Safety Act, produced by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA), Apps said it remained difficult to judge how far the industry had changed since the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives. He noted that while some organisations had made genuine cultural shifts, others reported little improvement.

Apps said many professionals continued to feel they could not speak out when they identified risks, often because clients prioritised profit over the needs of building users. He highlighted a recent case where a management consultant raised concerns about transfer slabs – an area flagged by the Building Safety Regulator – but was told to rewrite their advice rather than have the scope or budget adjusted.

Apps added that construction’s reputation suffered unfairly, stressing that it remained an essential industry and expressing hope that the BESA guide would support meaningful change.

BESA chief executive David Frise said client decisions carried major social consequences, noting that people spent most of their lives inside buildings commissioned by clients who often still believed the Act “doesn’t apply to us”. He thanked the Association’s Building Safety Act advisory board, led by director of specialist knowledge Rachel Davidson, and emphasised that the guide had been developed with eight partner organisations to reflect a united industry approach.

The guide aims to address ongoing concerns that many clients continue to base procurement on cost and speed, and are unaware of their legal duties and liabilities. It sets out those responsibilities in plain English and reinforces that the new safety regime applies to all buildings, not only higher-risk or high-rise residential projects.

Jon Vanstone, chair of the Building Safety Regulator’s Industry Competence Committee, said the Act had created clearer expectations for clients and that the BESA guide made these explicit. He urged clients to consider the long-term consequences of early decisions, warning that systems “fail at the beginning” and cannot be corrected by checks later in the process.

Lilly Gallafent, CEO of real estate consultancy Cast and a contributor to the guidance, said clients must lead cultural change by allocating risk fairly and focusing on the operational life of buildings. She said the sector was recovering from the difficult early stages of the legislation’s rollout and now had a “game-changing environment” for project delivery, with Gateway 3 increasing the emphasis on technical assurance.

Gallafent added that the Act brought the industry closer to its long-held goal to “build the right things, make some money, and go home”.