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Accelerating Building Safety Compliance: Leveraging AI

Jul 29, 2024

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire on 14th June 2017, which claimed 72 lives and underscored critical flaws in building safety regulations, the UK undertook a comprehensive overhaul of its building safety framework. This tragic event set off a chain of actions, beginning with Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review in May 2018, which called for more stringent regulatory measures. The government’s response to this culminated in the Building Safety Act 2022, marking a landmark shift towards enhanced safety standards.

 

With the Act now in place, the construction industry is poised to embrace innovative solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate compliance, including the rapid and robust preparation of Safety Case Reports (SCRs).

 

By leveraging AI, stakeholders can streamline the compliance process, mitigate risks more effectively, and uphold the highest standards of building safety, thereby honouring the lives lost in the Grenfell disaster and safeguarding future generations.

 

The Safety Case Report plays a crucial role in building safety and compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022. It serves as a comprehensive document that demonstrates how building safety risks are being managed and mitigated and is now a legal requirement for all high-rise residential buildings (over 18 meters or 7 storeys; with at least two residential units).

 

A Safety Case Report is in essence, a living document that is used throughout the life of a high-rise residential building to ensure its ongoing safety and compliance with the law. It is a valuable tool for building owners, managers, residents, and regulators to understand and manage the safety risks associated with the building, including as part of the Building Assessment Certificate (BAC) process undertaken by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) (part of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE)). Furthermore, third parties involved in the valuation, purchase, sale and insuring of high-rise residential buildings are now routinely requesting a copy of the latest version of a building’s safety case report.

 

Before we can understand the role of AI in the creation of a safety case report, we first need to understand the task in hand.

 

As those in the industry will know, it’s not unfair to say that the guidance of how the legislation should be implemented into the creation of the safety case report, has not been as comprehensive as it could have been. However, in essence.

  • The safety case report requires a thorough assessment of the safety risks within a building, including fire, structural, and other hazards. This involves identifying potential causes of failure, evaluating the likelihood and consequences of such failures, and documenting the findings.
  • The report must outline the measures in place to mitigate and manage the identified risks. These measures can be both preventative (e.g., fire-resistant materials, sprinkler systems) and reactive (e.g., evacuation procedures, emergency response plans). The effectiveness of these measures should be appropriate, proportionate, regularly reviewed and updated.
  • The safety case report serves as evidence that the Accountable Person is fulfilling their duties under the Building Safety Act. It demonstrates that they have taken all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of residents and that the building meets the required standards. This will be assessed by the Building Safety Regulator and the Accountable Person must submit the Safety Case Report to the Building Safety Regulator when requested; a successful assessment will result in a Building Assessment Certificate being issued, which should be displayed in a prominent position in the building.
  • The report promotes transparency by making building safety information accessible to residents, regulators, and other stakeholders. This can help build trust and confidence in the safety of the building. Furthermore, the Accountable Person must meaningfully engage with residents and take account of their feedback and concerns regarding all things building safety.
  • The safety case report is not a static document. It should be regularly reviewed and updated to reflect any changes in the building or its use, as well as any new risks that may arise. This ensures that the building’s safety management system remains effective and up to date.

 

This all needs to be undertaken with a deep understanding of the various pieces of legislation, secondary legislation and government guidance, to ensure a structured approach to identifying, assessing, and managing risks, ultimately contributing to a safer and more resilient built environment.

 

AI already offers a multitude of benefits that are transforming the way we live and work in 2024. These include driving efficiency, innovation, and personalisation, while also addressing critical challenges found in sectors such as healthcare, security, and sustainability.

 

In the UK construction industry, AI is already being applied in numerous ways to improve efficiency, safety, and sustainability. Including 3D modelling and Building Information Modelling (BIM) software incorporate AI algorithms for clash detection and simulating construction processes, identifying potential problems before they occur on-site. And even autonomous drones, cameras and sensors used for surveying and monitoring construction sites, providing real-time data for progress tracking, identifying safety hazards, detecting unsafe behaviours or conditions, alerting workers and ultimately preventing accidents.

 

So, with huge amounts of new and complex legislation and large volumes of data on each building, it’s not surprising that AI is already delivering efficiencies for safety case reporting. For instance, fully understanding the risks presented in a high-rise residential building through near instantaneous analysis of risk assessments and control measures against current legislation and guidance, is a task previously reserved for only the most qualified in fire and structural safety, but something AI can do in seconds rather than days. Then taking the next step and assessing whether a safety case is sufficient to write a safety case report, or whether the report itself demonstrates all reasonable steps have been taken and the duty holders have met their legal duties, could be achieved by AI in just minutes. And ultimately, generating reports based on multiple complex data sources is already commonplace for AI, so using it to generate the safety case report itself just makes sense.

 

Given the very complex requirements of a safety case report and the legislative obligations for the principal accountable person to adhere to, it is no wonder the industry is looking to AI to find a way of de-risking the process and making it much more efficient.

 

Leading the field of AI within the built environment, Black Boots Technology with their specialist domain knowledge of high-rise residential fire and structural safety, took the lead with the first of their safety products, Black Boots – Safety Case Reporting (BB-SCR).

BB-SCR is an Ai tool that empowers Principal Accountable Persons or their agents to upload safety case information, obtain an initial assessment of that information, a plan to fill any gaps, and the delivery of a robust, compliant, and easy to understand draft safety case report in an editable Microsoft Word format in just minutes.

Made up of multiple machine learning applications embedded within a web application, BB-SCR utilises machine learning algorithms to learn from a data set (the knowledge base) containing all the legislation and government guidance. The platform assists the user in uploading their safety case, analyses the safety case for gaps, provides a plan to fill the gaps, and ultimately produces a robust and compliant safety case report.

 

This powerful tool means that if the building safety case is already complete, a safety case report can be generated in less than a day, driving huge efficiencies and costs savings, with only a final review by a competent human required. If however, the safety case report does have some known gaps, not only does BB-SCR provide a plan of how to fill them, but it does this in a fully compliant way, using all available government guidance.

 

BB-SCR’s then enables the user to re-run the assessment process until they create a compliant safety case report. BB-SCR.

  • Assists in understanding what is needed for a compliant safety case.
  • Reduces the time and effort taken to create a draft safety case report (from many days to just minutes).
  • Provides a platform users can use to keep their safety case and report update for use by all stakeholders.

 

For the thousands of existing higher-rise buildings in England, the new stringent regulatory regime from the Building Safety Regulator means significantly more work and cost in the coming months and years. However, AI is once again proving that it can efficiently solve these complex problems, by improving efficiency, supporting total compliance with all legislation and guidance and driving down the cost of delivering the new building safety measures and helping to transform the built environment and enable residents to be safe and feel safe in their homes.

 

But when it comes to the use of AI in Construction, think of AI like a high-tech toolkit, it comes with advanced, specialised tools that can manage various tasks with precision and speed, but it still requires skilled craftsmen to utilize these tools effectively. All the examples above, show that AI excels when it complements human expertise, not replaces it.

 

This presents a golden opportunity for construction firms to leverage AI, not just to boost productivity but also to attract and retain top talent. Even the most advanced AI tools are only as good as the data they’re trained on and the human oversight they receive.