Confronting competency, codes, capacity, construction products and yes, costs as a decade since Grenfell approaches
The call for a full public inquiry immediately followed the fire, organisations looked at their own processes, and there was the independent review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety; known as the Hackitt Review. The question of how this could happen quickly moved to questioning the competency, not only of those involved but of the entire industry, and has been the driving message over the past near decade.
In 2018, the Building a Safer Future report was published, concluding that existing regulatory and competency frameworks were not fit for purpose. Following this, the Industry Competence Steering Group (ICSG) was set up by the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), to define competence requirements for twelve key industry roles. The Marketing Integrity Group (CPA MIG) was set up by the Construction Products Association (CPA) following criticism of product testing regimes, manufacturers and suppliers. By the end of the year, the government banned combustible materials on new high-rise homes. The response’s focus rightly centred around those responsible for the brief, design, construction and management of buildings, or duty holders, alongside the identification and remediation of other buildings.
Publication of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 report was swiftly followed by the Building Safety Bill in 2019, outlining the roles and responsibilities of Principal Designers (PDs), Principal Contractors (PCs) and clients. Finally passed in 2022, the BSA was one of the most significant pieces of legislation for what was seen as a failing industry, though applying its requirements in practice within an often-changing regulatory landscape would prove for many to be anything but straight-forward.
In April 2021, the freely available Flex 8670 (‘Built environment. Core criteria for building safety in competence frameworks. Code of practice’) was published by BSI as a temporary framework while permanent British Standards were developed, setting the basis for the competence frameworks to come.
In September, the Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI), a voluntary scheme for manufacturers, was published to try to tackle competency from the product side. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) was also established within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to oversee the safety of high-rise buildings and hold duty holders accountable. In 2022, CPA proposed a construction product competence standard in its white paper, and in January 2023, BSI proposed its core criteria for a construction product competence code of practice. Most importantly, January 2023 was also when the BSA itself became law. CIOB and RIBA published its Guide to Managing Safety-Critical Elements in Building Construction, followed by the opening of the RIBA Principal Designer Register in October 2023.
In early 2024, A Higher Bar – Achieving a Competence-led Built Environment, the third and final report of the Competence Steering Group, was published, whilst just a few months later, the temporary framework used to develop many of the professional competency programmes (BSI Flex 8670) was replaced by BS 8670-1:2024, which crystalised the original into a formal British Standard.
During the year, CIAT, the Association for Project Safety (APS), and the Association of Consultant Architects (ACA) all launched their equivalent registers for Principal Designers. Some were accompanied by PD courses to demonstrate and evidence competency through skills, knowledge and experience. For contractors, CIOB launched its PC Competency Certification Scheme (PCCCS) along with a supporting course.
Naturally, a variety of Building Safety hubs had come into existence via the institutions aligned with the various registers, though a single cross discipline point of reference did not yet exist. In the summer 2024, Designing Buildings, the construction knowledge wiki, with Liz Male and Enframe Consulting, launched the Building Safety Wiki. It aimed to create a free, centralised, searchable Building Safety resource, and a place to share, track and access multi-discipline perspectives and knowledge.
September saw the Grenfell Phase 2 final report published, which included what it called the web of blame saying, ‘my closing is to map out for you who blames whom and for what, and there are three reasons for doing that: legal, cultural and moral’. By the end of 2024, one year after its launch, the RIBA PD register had just 22 architects registered, with the slow uptake story similar for other PD registers.
In January 2025, just before introduction of the Procurement Act, the government response to the final Grenfell inquiry, and its Construction Products Reform Green Paper, the development of a Manufacturers Information Hub (MIH) was announced. The MIH’s original consortium, which included two companies that had been named in the inquiry, indicated that it ‘could address the call for a construction data library’, aiming to launch a pilot by the summer, with some funding from an undisclosed government source.¢In terms of the proposed construction product competence standard or codes of practice that had been proposed in 2022, nothing had at this point come to fruition and been published, but something in the region of 150 companies had by now been assessed under the CCPI.
By the end of 2025, PD registrations with RIBA had increased to 143, with 34 registered with APS, 31 with CIAT and 40 with the ACA, though a publicly available register of PCs who had completed the PCCCS wasn’t readily available. Compared to tens of thousands of practising designers nationwide, these remain extremely small numbers.
Importantly, RIBA announced its call for a competence-led approach to architects’ regulation and to repeal the Architects Act, with CIAT in turn confirming its openness to reform. The end of the year also saw BSI and ICSG announce the development and pre-registration of its Competence Hub to help engage more professionals, share competence related standards, frameworks, and guidance, and raise issues.
John Smith MCIAT, a practicing architectural technologist and qualified and registered PD, is clear in his mind what the most recent developments mean in terms of direction of travel for designers.
Competence in the construction industry has quietly shifted from a professional aspiration to a legal exposure. The Building Safety Act did not just introduce new roles or processes; it fundamentally changed how responsibility is assigned, evidenced, and scrutinised. Duties are now explicit. Decisions are traceable. And in some cases, accountability is personal.
That context is what makes the launch of the BSI and ICSG Competence Hub genuinely significant. Not because it adds another layer of administration, but because it reflects the direction the industry is being pushed toward: demonstrable, auditable competence that can be tested long after a project has completed. Competence now must be provable. Not assumed. Not implied by experience. Not inherited through job titles.
In this last year before a decade of learning the lessons of Grenfell falls upon the industry, have levels of competency improved? Have the registered figures increased? If not, are the barriers being confronted? Are registration figures even a useful measure of competence across the board anyway?
For now, at least, associated higher education fees alone for the required 3-4 years study to enter the profession might run to £10,000 a year (excluding accommodation and living costs); often longer for architects. This is way before any specialist qualification is considered, such as building safety, with costs in the region of an extra £1,000; not to mention the various annual registration fees. Also, at this current point in time, practice fees for architectural work remain only stable. These issues directly supress entry, progression, and therefore industry capacity. Confronting these costs must be at least one of the routes towards solving the issue.
Moreso, there is the uncomfortable reality that very few practices carry professional indemnity insurance that explicitly covers fire safety critical design decisions, particularly in relation to Building Regulations Part B and the specification of external wall systems. Residual risks will therefore continue to fall back onto the contractor. Furthermore, indication is that very few specialist fire safety consultants carry professional insurance cover anywhere near that of architectural technologists or architects. This means that the status quo remains for many projects to effectively default to Design and Build procurement, with Employer’s Requirements increasingly framed around FRAEW outputs, fire authority advice and Part B compliance, rather than being an integrated design responsibility.
On the product side, whilst perhaps more products will be signed up to the CCPI, will it be a significant portion? Are costs also a constraint, especially in the context of the European markets’ introduction of product passports and all that goes with them? Are competency standards and registers for other construction professionals, product manufacturers and sales staff likely? Current indication is that 2026 will see the publication of the freely available PAS 2000 – a code of practice for bringing safe products to market – and, later in the year, BS 8670-2 – a code of practice for construction product-related competence – will be published. How will these shape the construction product landscape and the specifiers that dwell in it moving forward?
Increasingly in practice and practicality, the BSA and issues facing design and construction teams has led to specialist manufacturers and system providers producing information for submission to the PD for Building Regulations and the BSR. This is despite those parties not typically carrying design liability insurance for fire safety decisions, with residual risks thus falling back onto the contractor.
Compounding this issue, practices are still routinely being assured that products and systems are compliant, only for detailed technical review to reveal that specific configurations being proposed do not, in fact, meet the stated performance requirements or conditions of use. This might be particularly evident once full system build-ups, test evidence, scope limitations, or installation constraints are examined in detail. Where clients or contractors have already been commercially committed to a system, often on the basis of cost or programme, there can be significant resistance to change, leaving designers and PDs in the difficult position of having to explain why a previously promoted solution is non-compliant. This continues to make the proposals for any construction library, manufacturer or products hub more complex than it is in planning. Whilst proposals continue to focus on the product manufacturer side without looking at specific use cases, such as from the specifier side – and with little or no representation in development – they are unlikely to scratch beneath the surface of the real issues.
More often than is comfortable, specialist subcontractors continue to cite precedent, with “we have done it like this elsewhere” or “this is how it has always been done”, despite the clear shift in regulatory expectations and evidencing requirements following Grenfell. The result is that those raising legitimate compliance concerns can continue to be perceived as obstructive, rather than as merely discharging their statutory duties.
When it comes to construction products reform, a government white paper and consultation in response to its green paper was just published, along with a consultation titled General Safety Requirement for Construction Products. These drip feed outcomes, along with the new standards, should help manufacturers and specifiers navigate forward through the fog. Though some form of universally accessible, standardised and practically useful product library still seems a long way off. It is key that BSR will move toward becoming a fully independent statutory body. But the realities of fragmented allocation of responsibility continues to sit uncomfortably with the conclusions of the Hackitt Review and subsequent government guidance, which explicitly criticised the dilution and transfer of safety-critical design responsibility.
Will there, perhaps through the BSI hub, be the chance for a centralised register of PDs and PCs, rather than it be fragmented by institution as it is now? And how will this marry with RIBA’s current campaign for protection of function as a route to better control in competency?
As it stands, the industry remains constrained by the insurance markets that are largely risk-reactive, rather than aligned with the intent of the Building Safety Act. Perhaps moves towards project-based insurances will be better revisited in this context. For now, though, the absence of an explicit, clearly worded exclusion for fire safety from insurers does not guarantee that such work is covered. There is the continued and strongly advised need for practices to engage directly with their broker to confirm whether their policy provides appropriate cover for fire safety design, product specification, and the Principal Designer for Building Regulations role.
So, time will tell whether 2025 was the year where designers, contractors and clients finally started to shape what competency needs to look like, even if under separate routes. 2026 is the year this will likely expand to fire officers, product manufacturers and sales,¢but also needs to better expand to insurers and the industry as a whole. Even under the new and overarching umbrella of its newly established independent body, it will be key for industry personnel in offices and on sites alike to share experiences across disciplines and highlight issues in practice. The building safety wiki and the newly launched hub can act as catalysts to capture this, with a view to creating a golden thread of knowledge, not for a single building, but the entire industry.
As we reach ten full years since the tragedy next year, 2026 must be the year to evidence the lessons learned from the decade; that it has amounted to significant change for the better in the built environment and for its users. If this year does not bring fire officers, products, insurers, manufacturers and all others fully on board in the competence frameworks, then 2027 risks becoming another milestone marked by intent rather than evidence.
