The new UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment contextualised for Higher-Risk Buildings (UK-SPEC HRB) has been developed by the Engineering Council in response to recommendations in Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review of building regulations and fire safety, Building a Safer Future, commissioned by the UK government in the aftermath of 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire.
UK-SPEC HRB was developed in conjunction with professional engineering institutions and expert volunteers ‘to assess the competence and commitment of individual engineers and technicians working on higher-risk buildings in the UK’. Based on the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment (UK-SPEC), the new Standard is ‘tailored for engineers and technicians working in the built environment, particularly on the design, construction, maintenance, and operation, of higher-risk buildings’.
Incorporating the criteria from BS 8670, it sets out a sector-specific competence framework consisting of a core document and Discipline Annexes. Demonstrating competence could involve registration against the core framework only, or a combination of the Discipline Annexes: Fire Engineering, Structural Engineering, Building Services Engineering, and Facade Engineering.
As the launch’s keynote speaker, Dame Judith Hackitt highlighted the importance of having assured competence of those working on higher-risk buildings, emphasising that this ‘must be centred on professionalism: people who will uphold high standards of professional conduct themselves, and call out those who undermine that in any way’. She dubbed the launch ‘very much the end of the beginning of the process’, with engineering institutions needing to promote the new Standard to their members, and to strongly encourage people to go through the process, and wider industry needing to be informed about it and its benefits.
A welcome and overview of the importance of regulation was given by Lord Lindsay, Chair of the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS), followed by an address by Prof John Chudley, Chair of the Engineering Council, who described UK-SPEC HRB as ‘a framework that reinforces professional accountability with public safety at its core’. Speaking for the Building Safety Regulator, head of Operational Policy – Competence, Sandra Ashcroft, welcomed the new Standard as ‘an invaluable tool for identifying and engaging truly competent professionals who can meet the stringent safety requirements of HRBs’.
Trustees and staff from the Engineering Council joined with representatives from the professional engineering community to celebrate what the organisation dubbed ‘a milestone in working towards improved public safety’.