Standards matter – competence for building safety
Dame Judith Hackitt has stressed the need for competency, accountability and responsibility to be at the heart of the new building safety system, in order to rebuild the public’s trust in providing safe homes.
Speaking at the IET National Conference for Electrotechnical and Building Safety Competence, designed to bring experts together, working with or within the electrotechnical sector and in building services/safety related roles with a key focus on individual competence, accountability and continuing professional development. Dame Judith’s presentation explained how legislation will incentivise the take up of professional registration, which in turn will help to demonstrate competency. She stressed how the focus must be on delivering quality buildings that are safe, ‘competence and quality assurance must become part of the new culture across the whole of construction.’
As the UK regulatory body for the engineering profession, operating under a Royal Charter, the Engineering Council plays a crucial role through setting the internationally-recognised standards for professional registration. As Engineering Council CEO Alasdair Coates explained in his presentation to the IET National Conference, the Engineering Council also holds the Register of individual engineers and technicians who have been assessed as meeting that standard of engineering competence and commitment.
Coates says, ‘The Engineering Council’s vision is to maintain society’s confidence and trust in the engineering profession. Professional registration is important because standards matter – particularly in safety-critical areas of work, the public has a right to expect engineers to be able to demonstrate their competence and behave in an ethical, sustainable way.’
Implementing one of the recommendations of Working Group 1 – Engineers (following Dame Judith Hackitt’s report), the Engineering Council is developing a contextualised standard for engineers working on high risk buildings. This is a version of The UK Standard for Engineering Competence and Commitment (UK-SPEC) 4.0, which will embed BSI’s overarching competence framework standard for everyone working on a building, specifying the engineering competences.
This contextualised standard will enable individuals’ competence to be assessed by professional engineering institutions (PEIs) against the standard and if successful, added to the publicly searchable Engineering Council Register.
Professional registration is open to any competent practising engineer or technician, with multiple pathways to registration available. Registration not only demonstrates an individual’s competence, but their commitment to maintaining and enhancing that competence through Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
