During the development of BB-SCR, our Ai tool for writing safety case reports, we have been fortunate enough to work with many building managers and their safety cases. And what has struck me, is just how challenging it is to ensure every building risk is properly managed!
The first challenge you face is to simply know what the risks are. This can only be achieved by rigorously assessing every aspect of building safety, reviewing every maintenance and inspection report, and ensuring the many building risk assessments are current and suitable for the building’s use.
Invariably though, something won’t be quite right. An electrical fault here, an emergency light battery failed there, the door closing mechanism not working, plus there may be something more seriously wrong; external walls contain flammable materials, or the structure hasn’t been properly protected from fire. And all these known faults need to be remediated, which might take years.
But then there are the unknown issues. Those potential risks you simply do not know about. You have always done everything compliantly, and previously there was no need for an intrusive survey here or there, but now you need to comply with the Building Safety Act 2022 and ensure you have every piece of information, digitally available in one place, every risk identified, and appropriately managed – this is the building safety case, which forms part of your golden thread of information.
Without a complete safety case, you cannot write your Safety Case Report (SCR) and as a Principal Accountable Person (PAP), the representative of the PAP, or the competent person engaged on behalf of the representative of the PAP as is more likely, there is now a legal responsibility to write and keep up to date, a building safety case report for every high-risk building in England.
But of course, this is only half the story, assuming you know every risk in your building, and you’ve identified how those risks can be mitigated, funding the work is an entirely different matter. With Section 20 (Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) triggers, protection for qualifying leaseholders and the many variations of leaseholder and service charge agreements out there, completing the required remediation work may well be the easy part.
At Black Boots, we have identified that technology can assist those taking on the task of writing a safety case report. We have developed a product called BB-SCR – Black Boots Safety Case Reporting.
Firstly BB-SCR will enable you to upload your safety case, and then receive an assessment of it. This assessment will identify gaps (a missing resident engagement strategy, fire strategy or structural survey for instance), but more importantly, it will identify the risks in the safety case and highlight where you have not yet proven you are managing those risks. This is a vital component of writing a compliant safety case report, and as an AI, BB-SCR can do this for you in minutes, without the potential for human error. Black Boots Technology Limited | Heritage Exchange, South Lane, Elland, HX5 0HG| T: 07977 418 435 Registration No.: 15324230 | info@blackboots.uk | www.blackboots.uk
You will of course then need to go and fill the gaps. This may mean commissioning surveys, risk assessments and strategies, or commissioning maintenance to address the faults highlighted, or it could be as simple as adding information about a safety management system you forgot to upload. However once complete, you just upload the new, additional safety case information, and BB-SCR will let you know whether the information is now sufficient to draft your safety case report.
Even better, if it is enough, it will simply go ahead and write it for you, delivering an editable Microsoft Word document, fully branded, ready for your competent person or company to review and sign off.
We believe BB-SCR is a great asset to have at your disposal when it comes to managing building safety risks and if you agree, we’d love to hear from you.