Industry discussion often goes straight to ‘what does good look like’ when it comes to the level of design detail that needs to be submitted to the Building Safety Regulator to demonstrate that a project satisfies all of the functional requirements of Building Regulations. This is particularly pertinent for projects where there is a contractor’s design portion (CDP) provision (specialist supplier design work or similar) within the contract.
The BSR was set up to raise safety standards in all buildings.
The BSR expects that dutyholders, in turn, will adopt a sensible and proportionate approach to managing safety, focusing on significant risks. It is the designer(s) who must evidence and demonstrate how compliance will be achieved. This applies to all the relevant requirements of the Building Regulations, not just the building safety and fire safety aspects of a project.
What is needed for a Gateway 2 application?
GW2 applications must include full plans, specifications and schedules describing works, all catalogued in a reference file, plus supporting documents in accordance with Regulation 4 of the Higher Risk Building Regulations:
- a competence declaration from the developer
- construction control plan
- change control plan
- building regulations compliance statement
- fire and emergency file
- mandatory occurrence reporting plan statement
- partial completion strategy (if applicable).
- developer statement
It’s clear that some clients have been caught out by just how much work is involved, suggests David Brook, Technical Director at Hawkins\Brown. They say their practice has been very strict in writing to clients to detail all of the steps they are taking towards submission and how they affect timeframes, both as designer and Principal Designer.
A major concern is that a client might seek to attribute delays to the architect, when the delays are an unavoidable part of the process. Delays due to critical project milestone processes are not new considerations to overcome with clients, though the new regime is new territory presenting further uncertainty.
This could be a problem - the GW2 approval process itself can be a major expense for the client. The application fee is £180 and then the regulator charges £144 per hour to review the application, so it is therefore in the client's interest to be as robust as feasible within the submission detail.
In order to make sure the process is as smooth as possible, Hawkins\Brown uses a registered building inspector working alongside its design teams in a non-approval capacity to help with demonstrating compliance and supporting arguments for a regulation or code to be interpreted in a particular way. It has had its first GW2 submission accepted and validated, but has yet to liaise with the regulator on the sufficiency of detail, and has a number of projects progressing towards a GW2 application. The regulator offers limited advice on how submissions should be structured, but cannot advise on compliance itself.
David earmarks change control as a further programme risk area. Any changes made to approved plans - or any departure from strategies or guidance in an approved document - require a change control application that must include an explanation, a list of people whose advice has been sought and a compliance statement, an assessment of documents affected by the proposed change, and a statement by the developer confirming agreement.
A “major change” - defined as a change that undermines the basis by which the building control approval was granted - requires a separate application to be made to the Regulator and the introduction of a potential six weeks delay due to the decision timing. A major change must not be carried out, and the work to which it relates must not start, until the change control application is granted.
“There’s a really tricky balance to be struck in terms of the cost of making a change to an application detail and possible programme impacts,” David says.
Read an explainer from the BSR on the HRB regime .
How does Design and Build factor into the process?
Design and Build adds further complexities to the procurement phase of HRB residential projects; depending on how the client times the Principal Contractor’s letter of intent and contract award and at what point the contractor takes over Principal Designer duties.
David recommends using RIBA’s Relevant Requirements Tracker, the model tool for designers and Principal Designers that will track and monitor all elements of design work for compliance with the relevant requirements of the Building Regulations. Hawkins\Brown uses the tracker to organise and evidence HRB compliance to the regulator, and it can also support the change control process.
The free to download Relevant Requirements Tracker takes the form of a spreadsheet that may be adapted to suit the project needs.
Using the tracker may still be quite a complex process, says David, but it allows the designer to go through every explicit regulatory requirement because absolutely everything that could be relevant is listed. The tracker also strings everything together to create an index for the regulator to look at. They suspect that some of the third-party GW2 assurance consultants are simply using the tracker as they seem to follow an identical format.
As discussed in the RIBA Principal Designer Guide, the Relevant Requirements Tracker “will assist you to manage and monitor the daily functions associated with discharging your duties, to effectively plan, manage, monitor, and coordinate the design work of others requires more than simply seeking and ticking off designers’ claims and evidence of compliance”.
David thinks that Hawkins\Brown has now found the right balance between project viability and demonstrable regulatory compliance in preparing its GW2 submissions without having 100% as built information prior to starting on site. The practice is hoping that the regulator’s interpretation of what constitutes a tolerable level of detail is the same.
What other advice is there?
When it comes to completing an application successfully, David recommends planning out the design coordination process from the commencement of Stage 3 onwards, which means being mindful of what the definitions for each work stage are. In this context, Stage 3, they say should mean spatial coordination and Stage 4 is where everyone should largely be focusing on their own designs, albeit with coordination still taking place between work packages.
“I don’t think that's what often happens,” David says, “and we're often still shuffling the design around when it should be fixed.”
Instead, David suggests architects should plan out design activities through Stages 3 and 4, getting those elements of CDP into an application, and taking all the right steps along the route. Hoping to be compliant towards the end of a project is just not a good strategy.
RIBA will continue to explore guidance surrounding Gateway 2 applications in the New Year (2025).
Read all our features on the Building Safety Act and the new building regulations.
Thanks to David Brook, Technical Director, Hawkins\Brown
Text by Neal Morris. This is a professional feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas
RIBA Core Curriculum topic: Legal, regulatory and statutory compliance.
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