Net zero shift and building safety focus to drive greater collaboration

In our most recent article on collaboration in construction we looked at how exceptional events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian war, bring about, and at times necessitate, greater collaboration between the parties to a construction project.

But incremental shifts, as well as exceptional events, can also be drivers for increased collaboration between contractors and their supply chains, as we can see when we examine two of the most significant developments currently impacting on the UK construction industry: the increasing prioritisation of environmentally sustainable, net zero construction; and the new building safety regulatory regime applicable to high-rise buildings in England.

Decarbonisation

Decarbonisation is one of the major themes to emerge from Pinsent Masons’ recent work around the industrialisation of construction.

As part of that work, we considered the practical steps needed to decarbonise infrastructure including greater cost transparency, technological solutions and, importantly, collaboration around the sharing of data. More recently, we looked at the risks and rewards that will come from greater collaboration within the context of green technology.

In common with many business sectors, infrastructure has been slow to embrace the benefits of data sharing and with good reason: the need to protect trade secrets and IP along with data privacy concerns around the design, construction and operation of infrastructure. At the same time, hierarchical supply chains across the industry make data capture beyond the major contractors a challenge.

But decarbonisation – whether due to ambitious national and international targets, or simply because it is the right thing to do – is the biggest challenge of our times and, in common with other industries and sectors, the construction industry will need to collaborate effectively, sharing data to maximise the potential benefits of green technologies and more sustainable ways of working.

To ensure this, parties to a project should ensure good reporting and governance structures are in place. They must also give thought to what will happen if and when the collaboration ends in terms of the targets, technology and the data; as well as to who will monitor and ensure compliance with changes to the regulatory requirements.

Building safety

The Building Safety Act received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022. It provides a complete regulatory overhaul and will signal a new era in the way buildings are built and construction products used.

One of the most significant changes being introduced is that the Health and Safety Executive, in its new role as building safety regulator, must approve in-scope projects at three stages or ‘gateways’: planning permission stage; pre-construction stage; and pre-occupation stage.

The need to accommodate this new regulatory framework, satisfy the gateway process and achieve the heightened completion sign off requirements will inevitably drive greater collaboration between the different stakeholders to a construction project. Whilst this is one of the positive by-products of the new regime, in the short term the new Act looks set to increase the upfront costs and make it longer and more expensive to deliver a project until parties get used to the new procurement models and collaborative working practices and until quality assurance protocols are established and the necessary training has been completed. 

Co-written by Nigel Blundell of Pinsent Masons.