26
ROUND TABLE REVIEW The debate
There have been many stories around Gateway 2 schemes being rejected by the BSR, and subsequently being sent to the back of the queue. But as well as the challenges, we wanted to hear about strategies for helping ensure that submissions were best equipped to pass through fi rst time. We heard in the fi rst session on the varied and signifi cant challenges, including that the Regulator was still woefully underresourced, lacked industry knowledge, and was possibly overly draconian in applying its rules. Also, a culture of ‘instant rejection’ of schemes based on a single fl aw in presentation, needed to change, to avoid the backlog of schemes being extended further. There were other key issues for speeding up approvals, such as how certain elements of buildings were being placed in ‘Category A’ of designs, and therefore allocated ‘complex’ status; some delegates believed they should not be treated as such. Also, attendees such as Mark Batchelor, managing director of Property Services at The Hyde Group, which owns and manages around 125,000 homes, pled the case for exempting key ‘emergency’ elements such as certain lifts, from the Gateway process. This was because schemes were being held in the queue based on such issues, which was disadvantaging social housing residents awaiting much-needed projects. As a Principal Designer working on HRB projects, and largely
retrofi ts in the social housing sector, Louise Flower of MacConvilles was in an ideal position to give the group insights on the new responsibilities, and the specifi cs that needed to be improved. She said that the key area was around emergency works, and advocated “looking more at ‘essential’ works rather than ‘emergency’ works,” as well establishing what budget is actually available from cash- strapped local authorities.
She said that undergoing the Gateway process for emergency works on existing HRBs was “slowing down improvements in fi re safety; it’s very slow, and it’s very costly.” And as Jamie Chubb pointed out, “funders don’t release the money until you have a Gateway 2 approval.”
Delivery & data
Our round table delegates showed why the delivery side of Higher Risk Buildings needed to improve too when it came to the quality of their Gateway 2 submissions for new build and retrofi t schemes. There were particular issues around submitting data on project design, and product safety compliance, with a wide range of quality currently evident in the market. With the BSR making no bones about instantly rejecting any scheme which did not comply with data standards, improving this had to be the fi rst priority going forward, said our delegates.
Stewart Kerr of Pennington Choices said there were still issues from pre-Grenfell industry culture in social housing retrofi t, where the client “would just go to the contractor and say I need you to design and build that so it comes back EPC C, I don’t care how you get there, I just need you to get it done.” He added, “once Grenfell happened, we started looking at our buildings, and they’re like Swiss cheese – we’ve done all this work to make them thoroughly effi cient but they are now full of holes.” Project teams including suppliers had to avoid ‘cut and paste’
ATTENDEES James Parker, Chair, Managing Editor, Architects’ Datafi le
Michele Pecoraro, Founder, P+P Architects Stewart Kerr, Senior Consultant, Pennington Choices Jamie Chubb, Director, PRP Architects Li Yen Lim , Managing Associate, Freeths Mark Batchelor, Managing Director of Property Services, The Hyde Group Louise Flower, Building Regulation Principal Designer, MacConvilles
SPONSORS’ ATTENDEES Sara Dawes, Regional Technical Sales Manager, Leviat David Atkinson, Head of Specifi cation, Metsec Lee Carron, Client Relations Manager, Premcrete
submissions, and resulting data inconsistencies, said our delegates. There was also ‘congested’ data and information around interfaces within structures, due to the combinations of various products and associated performance data accumulating in this space. The complexity of this area meant a likelihood of it causing continued problems for submissions.
Many of the issues in social housing around Gateway 2 and expediting product installation to protect tenants were crystallised by Mark Batchelor. He focused in on the challenges for smaller housing bodies, who the Hyde Group works with, mentioning one recent example where Gateway 2 procedures were causing obstacles for a specifi cation: “We knew they didn’t have the FRAEWs (Fire Risk Appraisals of External Walls) at that point, and we needed to put in a waking watch on one building; by doing it, we couldn’t do what we really wanted to do, ie install a temporary fi re alarm under emergency measures.”
Cost & approvals ‘with requirements’ Jamie Chubb, experienced in successful Gateway 2 submissions, dived into the morass of information and data which was currently required for submissions as the industry and the BSR evolved best practice. Data ‘dumping’ by suppliers was one issue which had been highlighted by the Regulator, but he said it was more complicated than that, explaining that submissions have been submitted prematurely, without the required certifi cations. He said that the “timing” within procurement for Gateway 2 applications “wasn’t right“ currently, with clients submitting proposals asking for fi re test certifi cates too early. He asked: “How do they have all of the supply chain and contractors in place to procure the works?”, adding: “I want design orders from suppliers on contract terms that nobody’s got set up yet, because I want to design for compliance, but I’m not going to commit to an order on your product.” Chubb said that the situation had led to the Regulator granting approvals but ‘with requirements,’ i.e. caveats around outstanding certifi cations. Mark Batchelor for one welcomed this, saying that it “should speed things up, and help the
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