Demonstrating Competence Update

Under the Building Safety Act, anyone appointing an individual or organisation to undertake design and construction work has a duty to ensure that they are competent. For individuals this means having the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours, whilst organisations must demonstrate ‘organisational capability’.

For organisations, the Common Assessment Standard, developed by Build UK, is an established third‐party certification scheme, recognised by Government in PPN 03/24 and supported by the CLC, which requires the appropriate management policies, procedures and systems to be in place. The latest version of the Common Assessment Standard, which was launched in July, includes a new Building Safety section, meaning that companies which are members of Build UK can demonstrate compliance with their responsibilities by ensuring that their supply chain partners are certified to the Common Assessment Standard by one of the Recognised Assessment Bodies.

For individuals, cards carrying the CSCS logo provide evidence of their qualifications and training for the job that they do on site, as part of determining competence. Working Group 2, supported by the CLC, is continuing the drive to set out the competence framework (or ‘path to competence’) for each specialist installer occupation. It is intended that those elements which can be assessed will be reflected on the relevant CSCS card and that continued development to maintain the required level of competence will also be included once this work has been completed.