3 reasons why to integrate the Building Safety Act Principal Designer role within the Lead Designer appointment
In his latest blog, Director, Colin Briggs-Campbell, highlights the critical role of the Building Safety Act (BSA) Principal Designer (PD) in ensuring legislative compliance, fostering personal growth, and providing reassurance.
1 – Legislative compliance
Hold up, hold up, before your eyes roll, let me explain. Yes, absolutely, there’s tonnes of formal and official guidance on the requirements of the Building Safety Act and the ethos behind the findings from the Grenfell inquiry. However, what about our duties as professionals, our raison d’être, our own moral compass? If you’re anything like me, I’ve worked hard to qualify as the Architect I am today and have immense pride in the work I deliver.
Quite simply, the ethos of The Act is to provide clarity on who is responsible for what. To achieve this, the Building Safety Act Principal Designer Role requires a competent professional to be integrated within the team, to track decision-making; planning, managing and monitoring along the way.
I’m super proud of the work my colleagues undertook as early adopters of the Building Regulations Principal Designer role. They have produced a suite of templates and straightforward documents to assist all our project leaders in their delivery of this key role.
2 – Opportunities for personal growth
Anyone that knows me, knows how passionate I am about helping our next generation of Architects on their journey to qualification. We have an excellent Academy at Bowman Riley which supports a diverse range of people on their career pathways.
The Building Safety Act Principal Designer Role, integrated within the Architectural appointment allows more opportunities for our next generation to visit site. The BSA PD role requires more time on site to ensure any changes are documented appropriately. It seems obvious, but this can only be a great thing for our junior colleagues, many of whom have experienced an educational journey online. Real-life building sites offer a multitude of opportunities to see how things get built, best practices and learning from our experienced colleagues.
And it’s not just junior colleagues that will benefit. An opportunity to leave our screens and meet people on site is great for variation to our daily routine, perhaps even improving our mental wellbeing along the way.
3 – Client Reassurance
I find a real variation in how our clients understand their duties and the impact of the Building Safety Act. Some have an awareness, some a deeper understanding but many are looking for reassurance that they’re discharging their duties correctly, fairly and minimising risk. Not many people are comfortable knowing they’re cutting corners when it comes to safety.
Integrating the BSA PD role within the Architectural appointment really ought to be the default for us all. I like to think we’re a “safe pair of hands” when it comes to our knowledge, skills, and behavioural approach to embracing this important factor in our role. For me, it’s key to demonstrate reliability, calmness, and competence when it comes to our ability to deliver this role effectively. This is much easier to achieve when the role is integrated within the lead designer or architectural commission and, importantly, aligns with the ethos of The Act.
Lastly, for my Jerry Springer moment (perhaps this is showing my age?!), this blog represents my thoughts and perspectives, written by me (and proofread the old-fashioned way by my colleague, Megan Johnson) without resorting to the ever-tempting AI resource. Why? Because I wanted to keep it real, human-type stuff, a real-life perspective.