Compliance in the Construction Industry

Construction is one of the most regulated industries in the UK, this being due to the high likelihood of exposure to hazards by workers, and resultant HSE statistics for injuries sustained and fatalities year on year. Keeping construction workers safe is key to maintaining operational compliance with regulations and legislation, avoiding hefty enforcement action, and retaining successful partnerships with clients and buyers based on quality workmanship.

With so many requirements to comply with, it would be easy to overlook something, which is why we recommend implementing management systems to help your organisation to streamline its operations, make efficient your processes, and keep track of your compliance efforts.

Understandably, the term ‘management systems’ often strikes fear into the beholder and implementing such a system seem difficult to achieve. Our experts are here to make sure that regardless of the size of your organisation, we implement a system that fits in seamlessly with your business activities and proportionate with the services you provide.

Certification of your management system to ISO 45001:2018 and SSIP provides your client/buyer with confidence in your organisation’s capabilities, and demonstrates that your organisation is committed to ensuring that their project will be completed with health and safety compliance at the forefront.

Health and safety

By its very nature, construction is a dangerous industry and therefore is subject to stringent health and safety legislation.

The Construction (Design and Management) (CDM) Regulations set out the key responsibilities of duty holders and form an overarching requirement for clients and construction industry organisations to ensure that the whole process from the initial design and planning of a project, through to completion, handover and beyond is conducted in a safe and methodical manner, and incorporates the reduction of risks, provision of basic welfare and involves ensuring the protection everyone involved at every stage.

The requirement for suppliers/buyers to demonstrate their own compliance to the CDM regulations at procurement, and to satisfy their own supply chains, has naturally spawned a variety of schemes and frameworks for assessing compliance. Although these schemes operate on similar structures and criteria (widely PAS91 & the Common Assessment Standard) organisations can still end up needing a variety of assessments from differing schemes, dependent on which is preferred by your client. There is also the risk that your organisation could implement a framework that does not quite match the requirements needed for a tender; not an ideal situation.

Thankfully, the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) has developed into an umbrella body for a significant number of these assessment schemes. If the SSIP recognises a scheme, this can enable automatic mutual cross-recognition, meaning that in most cases, you will only have to undergo one full assessment by one of the members, and your certificate can then satisfy other scheme members to get as many certifications that you may need – look at the SSIP Deem to Satisfy Chart on the SSIP website. On top of this, it will entitle you to significant discounts across the scheme members, what more could you want?

Whether you are a Principal Contractor, Contractor, Principal Designer, Designer, or a consultant who provides services in the construction industry, this certificate is for you.

British Assessment Bureau offers consultancy and certification services, helping organisations to achieve the internationally renowned ISO 45001:2018 certification. This certification (when conducted by a UKAS accredited certification body) is recognised by SSIP as satisfying the competency requirements of the CDM regulations, is one of the best ways of ensuring that you are working compliantly, and is accepted as a one-way cross recognition across all other SSIP member schemes.

Quality Management

In the construction industry, the durability of the build and service you provide is key to the success and the ongoing reputation of an organisation. Customers nowadays need to be wowed to spread the word, and positive feedback from real people included in your sales and marketing techniques can make a significant impression on your bottom line figures.

Managing quality isn’t just about choosing the most expensive materials, or having the poshest show home, it entails project management from start to finish, from ensuring the right quality aspects of the build design and specifications, choosing the most suitable materials for your project, being in touch with your employees and subcontractor resources, providing second-to-none customer service both pre and post-sales, right through to snagging and final handover. All of this is imperative to providing customers with the experience they need and deserve, and goes a long way in putting your organisation in a league of its own, to stand head and shoulders above your competitors.

A quality management system implemented and certified to ISO 9001:2015 provides your organisation with a clear and concise mechanism to control its quality provision through the life cycle of your project, management systems can also streamline and make more efficient your operational process, saving you time and money in the long run. When visible and marketed, being certified to ISO 9001 also gives your customers and supply chain confidence in your capability, aptitude and commitment to being able to provide exactly what is being asked of your organisation.

Construction Design Planning and Management

Industry compliance is not limited to legislation; standards and other requirements will demand your organisation’s compliance too, especially if you want to submit tenders.

For instance, Building Information Modelling (BIM), the process of managing information through the whole life cycle of a build, is increasingly popular in construction, but the accreditation is becoming something that organisations will need to comply with in order to tender for contracts. The UK Government requires construction suppliers to work at BIM Level 2 in order to tender for centrally-procured government projects, with plans to increase this requirement to Level 3 at a later date.

BIM brings many positives with it, but its implementation can place a strain on the rest of your organisation. For instance, because BIM makes it possible to produce thousands of 2D construction drawings from a single 3D model in mere minutes, it puts pressure on document control procedures that were built to handle a slower, paper-based design process.

This means it is more important than ever to have a solid Quality Management System (QMS) in place to handle the drastic changes caused by the adoption of BIM.

Thankfully, the process of implementing a QMS can actually make it easier to achieve BIM Level 2 accreditation. That is because they are both focused on quality management, so one can take the hard work out of the other.

Environmental impact, legislation and corporate social responsibility

Is there any industry subject to more environmental regulation than construction? From initial land impact assessments to waste management, each project is subject to strict regulation to ensure that it has as little effect on the environment as possible, and nowadays with environmental sustainability being at the forefront of everyone’s minds, clients/buyers are steering their awards towards responsible corporate entities who can demonstrate that they can lead the way to construction and development in a sustainable fashion.

This is another area where management systems can help you track your compliance efforts and ensure that nothing is missed. In this instance, implementing an Environmental Management System makes it easy to ensure that your organisation is complying with all the relevant environmental legislation. It does not hurt that it also demonstrates your green credentials when tendering for a contract, either, especially if you have formalised it with ISO 14001 certification.

Get ahead of your competitors

In 2018 the government developed an Environmental Improvement 25-year strategy, incorporating ambitions for major increases in house building, infrastructure investment, and economic growth. This strategy works hand in hand with the ambition of zero avoidable waste by 2050 and embedding of the ‘net environmental gain’ principle, a system developed to deliver environmental improvements locally and internationally. The ‘net environmental gain’ principle seeks in the future to expand its approaches used for biodiversity, to include wider natural capital benefits, such as flood protection, recreation and improved water and air quality and will sit alongside the current existing array of regulations that protect our most threatened or valuable habitats and species. As part of this plan, the government aims to explore reforms to developer contributions and consider how tariffs could be used to steer and incentivise development towards the least environmentally damaging areas. This being relevant to the provision from construction organisations of measurable and traceable environmental improvement objectives the management of activities, in a bid to improve sustainability.

Implementing an environmental management system that is certified to the ISO 14001:2015 standard can demonstrate that your organisation works concurrently and compliantly with relevant legislation, and will provide the organisation with a clear and consistent framework to support these strategies and in turn sustain and build on business continuity in our changing world.