16
INSIGHTS
• Behavioural • Legislative/Regulatory • Management • Technical.
Each heading has core competencies which are required for all buildings and additional competencies for PDs delivering HRBs.
Behavioural competence Under behavioural competence, architects need to demonstrate that they will not take on a specific Principal Designer dutyholder role when the needs of the project in question are beyond their competence, or their organisation’s capability. They also need to demonstrate the integrity required to identify and report design work that cannot conform to relevant requirements. They must encourage designers to perform their own duties, including to cooperate with other duty holders and challenge designers to rework designs if design work shows insufficient evidence of compliance and or insufficient design compliance. And, they must challenge the Principal Contractor’s comments if they compromise design work compliance.
Assessing competency SETTING OUT COMPETENCIES
The RIBA Principal Designer Register Handbook and Competence Criteria set out how architects need to demonstrate their competence to meet the criteria for registration
Clearly designers and Principal Designers have a duty to be honest about their capabilities, but that aside, how should clients assess their competence, and to what extent are they doing that? There are a number of options open to them. They can either ask for or require their appointees to be on one of the PD registers set up by RIBA, CIAT and APS. Or they can ask their consultants to provide a self-assessment, which seems to be the most common approach. To date there are 54 individuals on the RIBA register, 12 on the
Competence
Individuals must be able to demonstrate they are competent to carry out their duties and this means having the necessary skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours.
Organisations must be able to demonstrate they have the organisational capability to carry out their duties and undertake the work. This means having policies, procedures, systems and resources in place to make sure those employed by the organisation comply with all relevant regulations. The procedures and policies that organisations put in place should actively monitor and supervise their people and provide sufficient time and resources to do the job.
PAS 8671
There are no prescribed requirements for demonstrating competence under CDM but PAS 8671 sets out the competencies required for PDs with regard to the Building Regulations. The RIBA has set up a registration programme based on PAS
8671. The RIBA Principal Designer Register Handbook and Competence Criteria booklets set out how architects need to demonstrate their competence to meet the criteria for registration. There are four specific competency headings:
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
CIAT register, and the APS says they have nine but does not publish the list. Clearly this process is in its infancy. Furthermore, registration demonstrates having met the requirements prescribed under that particular scheme, but they are all different, and consequently some are more stringent than others. Ultimately clients will need to make their own decisions and have to address a number of questions. Will they care that one scheme is less demanding than another? Will the Regulator consider clients have met their duties if they accept registration, but do not require further, project-specific evidence? To what extent must clients consider the requirements related to the nature of their project? Is there a need for overall guidance on using these accreditations for both architects and clients? Do we need to make the process of assessing competency more standardised? The three principal dutyholders – clients, Principal Designers and Principal Contractors – all need to play their part to drive the outcomes Hackitt was promoting, and that Moore-Bick, who led the inquiry, was calling for. In many ways clients are the most disparate group of that triumvirate, but they sit at its head, and will be the ones who ultimately drive change, through their application and interpretation of the requirements of the regulations. Perhaps it is not surprising as the legislation is relatively new, but there are clients who are unaware of their duties and are failing to allow sufficient time and resources on projects. Guidance for clients is urgently needed.
The regulations are intended to stop the race to the bottom – clients hold the starting gun and the chequered flag.
ADF NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
