Standards Development


and buildings through standards development. Privatised in 1998, BRE now comprises a group of private companies owned by the BRE Trust. (BRE and BRE Global). The Trust is the largest UK charity for research and education in the built environment, and its mission is to build a better world. It uses BRE Group profits to fund research programmes through BRE and five university centres of excellence. BRE and BRE Global are subsidiaries, allowing BRE to be held as a national asset on behalf of the construction industry and its clients, independent of commercial interests, and impartial and objective. With expertise in every aspect of buildings and their construction, we can provide a seamless multidisciplinary approach to help prevent and solve problems where they arise. Much of what we do is around testing, building sustainability, and improving the health and wellbeing of building users.


INDEPENDENT CERTIFICATION BRE Global (previously BRE Certification) offers independent certification of fire, security, and sustainability products and services. Its brand, the Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB), is widely recognised and specified by insurers and construction professionals worldwide. This reflects BRE’s technical evaluation methods, and rigorous quality audits, which assess the performance and reliability of products to ensure fitness for purpose and levels of protection. LPCB-approved products can be viewed at


www.redbooklive.com. BRE Global also offers approval to British, European, international and its own Loss Prevention Standards, specified across multiple sectors, including healthcare. As well as writing the organisation’s own standards, BRE’s technical experts sit on British and European standards-drafting committees.


WHAT IS A STANDARD? In essence a standard provides an agreed way of doing something – a product, process, service, or activity – applied to achieve consistent, easier, safer, or healthier outcomes, and to share the same expectations. Testing against standards by an accredited third party, such as BRE, provides independent confirmation that products and services meet recognisable, agreed criteria which deliver consistent, repeatable, measurable outcomes.


THE CONSULTATION The BRE Trust provided funding to run a workshop in January 2015 at the Mersey Care NHS Trust’s Indigo Building in Maghull on Merseyside, and a subsequent wider consultation exercise, which will culminate in an announcement of recommendations at next month’s DIMHN’s 2015 conference. Taking a step back to scope the sector’s issues and needs elicited ways that a project like this should seek to make a difference. To get a balanced view, the workshop


provided an open forum for perspectives from key sector stakeholders, including service- users, commissioners, providers, and supply chains. Seventy invited delegates attended, representing NHS Trusts, independent organisations, manufacturers, and design and


18 THE NETWORK April 2015


Table 1: The main stakeholder drivers for standards Service-provider issues Quality


Supply chain issues The cost of testing


Consistency Reliability


Which standard to use? Relevance of testing


What attribute is being tested?


Who takes the risk? Lack of guidance


Need for something flexible and adaptable for different applications Something that works


Encourages innovation, leading to better quality and safer environments for patients


construction professionals, all with experience in mental healthcare projects. They identified product areas where issues and inconsistencies arise, priorities for where the real problems lie, and an understanding of what is needed. In break-out groups, delegates answered


Multiple testing of the same product


Inconsistent approaches from different service-providers Lack of standards, or standards not appropriate Clarity of requirements


Encourages innovation, leading to more market share/profits


At the interactive workshop session delegates defined the stakeholder needs, problems, barriers, and opportunities, to creating safe caring environments.


questions posed by BRE facilitator, Alison Nicholl, covering positive and negative aspects of mental healthcare facilities, and their procurement processes. They then identified key issues and voted for their priorities. The conversations were recorded, and key issues discussed across all the groups to account for all stakeholder views and reach consensus. The outcome created was a scorecard which set out the weighting for each area of concern. While our initial perception was the need to standardise anti-ligature aspects of windows and doors, the workshop defined the wider context.


Workshop outcomes, themes, and priorities The workshop supported the need for standards, and started to determine what the core features of standards should be, what design requirements to include, and what form standards might take. This article is not designed to answer the questions raised by the


workshop, but rather to set out the issues identified, and show what has been taken forward into the next stage of consultation. The main stakeholder drivers that emerged are listed in Table 1, and key points from the workshop follow: • The impact of location Product and design requirements might differ between areas, depending on the type of service-user, giving a balanced scorecard based upon risk and need. Suggested categories included high security, medium security, low security, and dementia care. Spaces could be divided into ‘well-observed’, ‘periodically- observed’, and ‘staff-only’, with private, communal, and administration areas treated differently. • Product performance issues Special consideration should be given to potential self-harm items – from windows and doors, to furniture padding and outdoor trees. However, simply focusing on safe products is out of date and ‘institutional’, when homely,


Seventy invited delegates attended the Liverpool workshop in January, representing NHS Trusts, independent organisations, manufacturers, and design and construction professionals, all with experience in mental healthcare projects.


Photograph courtesy of BRE.


Photograph courtesy of BRE.


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