Future-proofing Building Safety Act compliance with digital processes

Patrick Naughton00:01

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, hosted by FlowForma in partnership with McBains. We're covering a highly relevant topic: strategic digitalization, future-proofing compliance with evolving Building Safety Act legislation.

Patrick Naughton00:19

FlowForma is a world leader in enterprise-class, no-code digital process automation tools that let workforces rapidly digitalize a wide range of activities. Its BuildShield tool is designed for gathering, storing and maintaining the entire lifecycle of building information, to support compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022, ISO and CDM, plus much more. McBains is one of the leading property and construction consultants in the UK, offering everything from architecture and project management to engineering services, cost management and more.

Patrick Naughton01:16

Introducing our panel. From FlowForma, Shay O'Connor, head of solutions, has over 25 years' experience in the technology sector and is passionate about helping firms achieve their compliance goals through digitalization. Darragh Allen is an experienced digital product consultant at FlowForma who builds intuitive, robust digital solutions to complex compliance challenges. And our guest speaker, Jake Denney, is project director of health and safety and CDM services at McBains, a prominent leader in health and safety and an advocate for thinking innovatively about how compliance can be delivered. How are you all doing today?

Shay O'Connor02:10

All good, thanks, Patrick.

Patrick Naughton02:17

Before we kick off, a quick poll. Where are you in your compliance digitalization journey? Are you researching the best approach, do you have some compliance processes digitized, or is compliance fully digitalized in your organization?

Patrick Naughton03:04

Very interesting: 53% have digitized some processes, another 42% are researching the best approach, and only 4% are fully digitized. Any thoughts, Shay and Jake?

Shay O'Connor03:24

Not a shock from my end, to be honest. A lot of organizations do have some digitization, and 4% fully digitized is impressive. We don't come across many organizations that would say they've fully digitized all their compliance.

Jake Denney04:08

I think there's still some mistrust about digitization, even though we've had it for a good while now. In the health and safety industry digitization is on an upward curve, but as Shay said, it's not a surprise. Everyone is still looking for that digitization solution.

Patrick Naughton04:39

Thanks, both. Let's introduce our first topic: why digitalize your compliance processes?

Shay O'Connor04:51

Based on that feedback, a lot of organizations, as Jake was saying, are wary or hesitant about the best way to digitize. I don't like having to convince people unless they're comfortable that it's the right thing to do. It has to come with everybody. How do you feel, Jake?

Jake Denney05:28

Agreed. Some people are wary of digitization, and I think you also need to look at the generation. Many of the people leading companies today come from a generation where digitization was introduced partway through their careers. For younger people it's normal. The people who want to use it tend to be in mid-management roles, though more people at senior and board level now have a digital upbringing. There's still a fear that this is new and different, and a steep learning curve for everyone.

Shay O'Connor06:29

We ran an analysis recently of the organizations expressing interest in digitizing compliance in construction, and around 57% were mid-tier managers trying to convince senior people that this is the way to go. That's an effort in itself. Some see it as just another computer system, and not all IT systems are equal. Often they've had a bad experience with something five, six or seven years ago, and they're wary as a result.

Jake Denney07:47

The thing is, digitization is happening, and it's going to happen. The systems are more robust, more agile, more fluid, and they give you better data. Now's the time to look at digitizing, especially in health and safety, because the data and information it gives you really helps with compliance. With the introduction of the Building Safety Act, there's a real push from the HSE for people to evidence compliance, and digitization helps you do that.

Shay O'Connor08:31

What I love is the extra advantages people don't see, like the auditing that goes on in the background. You don't have to write down that you did something: it tracks it for you. It puts documents in the right place with the right naming format, so things don't get lost. All those small things take away a whole heap of admin that isn't enhancing your job.

Jake Denney09:17

Absolutely, and the additional advantage for the board is that once you take those little pieces away, you free up huge amounts of resource and free people to do the job they love, instead of the admin side that no one really enjoys. Digitization takes a lot of the pain out of that.

Shay O'Connor09:52

I always think of the people trying to compile end-of-month or status reports. They have to cram it together, it takes them away from their job, and all they're doing is reporting on work they've already done. That should be automatic. It can be, but you have to put in a bit of effort to get there.

Jake Denney10:33

In health and safety, with the Building Safety Act and the golden thread, there's a huge opportunity for us to embrace digitalization much more than we do. It helps with auditing on site: you can connect systems so information is available almost instantly to contractors and clients. At a strategic level, information from design team meetings can be entered into a digital process, recorded and shared instantly.

Jake Denney11:27

It helps compliance with health and safety legislation in general, the CDM regulations, the Building Safety Act and the building regulations. A system that gives you compliance with CDM pretty much gives you compliance with the Building Safety Act to a degree, and with the golden thread especially. It's time for the health and safety industry to take that big, brave step, because there aren't enough people to do the job, and digitization will help.

Shay O'Connor12:03

When I saw this topic, my big thought was, why wouldn't you digitize? There's usually a human reason. Now, the golden thread is something a lot of people scratch their heads over. It's an incredibly important piece of legislation, but what should I do, and what actually is the golden thread? Jake, you're best placed to kick this one off.

Jake Denney12:42

It's a really good point. The golden thread was introduced in 2022 under the Building Safety Act, and there's been a lot of discussion about what it is, who it serves and what its purpose is. It ties in well with digitization, because it says the information has to be stored digitally.

Jake Denney13:13

To understand the golden thread, you have to start at the end, with the landlord and the people responsible for the building. What information do they need to comply with the new legislation? That's your starting point. From there you go back to the very start, as the client at RIBA stage zero or one, and say: my outcome is compliance with the Building Safety Act once I have this building, and to comply I need this golden thread of information, so project team, you'll deliver it for me.

Jake Denney14:02

The client needs information that's digital, accurate and trusted, a single source of truth that gives accountability to the landlord and their FM team. So the golden thread is a way of collecting the key health and safety information about the building, strategically and operationally, through the project, so that at the end the client has their golden thread and their health and safety file, digitally.

Shay O'Connor14:54

The biggest thing for me is the accessibility of the information. Even when it's digitized, people say, I do it through email, I have a document here. But it's not organized, so you can't hand over your health and safety file to the landlord, because it's disjointed, in different places and inconsistent. Everyone thinks it'll be fine, until the day it's not.

Shay O'Connor15:41

I've seen organizations hit with fines recently. It's not that they were doing everything manually. They just didn't have the right processes in place to provide evidence that they'd done everything correctly. The audit wasn't there. And this is where you have real expertise, Jake: what are those health and safety actions on a given site or project? If you can digitize them and have all the information stored centrally and retrievable, that's the utopia.

Jake Denney17:12

Absolutely. Flip it around: clients and landlords are required under health and safety law and the CDM regulations to provide information about their building to whoever is working on it. How many times, as principal designer, do I ask, where's your health and safety information? And the answer is, I don't have very much: some drawings here, a bit of information there. Then clients spend a lot of money on surveys gathering information about a building they've owned for 20 years.

Jake Denney17:58

Digitizing that information through every project means that when someone asks about the asbestos, the services, or the cleaning and maintenance strategy, you can say, it's right here. You save the cost of finding it again, instead of offloading that cost onto the contractor, when the responsibility always stays with you as the client. Using your expertise at FlowForma to create a digital platform that's robust, accurate, accessible and accountable: why would a client not invest in that?

Shay O'Connor19:02

I always come back to the fact that people are afraid to put a toe in the water. They think they'll be fine and just keep going. But they can safeguard the future, and all the queries and audits, with a standardized digital approach.

Shay O'Connor19:38

On the journey to compliance digitization, organizations come to us and ask, what am I meant to do? For us, buy-in has to be there before anything else: the attitude that we're all in this, we're going to do it properly, and there's a very good reason to. If that mentality is there, we can get this done.

Jake Denney20:24

Definitely. Everyone involved needs to be bought into the process. And the one thing I've learned is that the journey starts with a particular expectation of the outcome, but you have to be prepared to be agile, because along the way someone says, we could do that, or it could do this as well.

Jake Denney21:16

You can do groundwork and talk to people like you, but finding someone you can trust is really important on your digital journey. Having a partner who says, we have expertise in this process, here's your need, let's make them work together. And trusting that partner when they say, if we do it this way it will be much easier and still achieve what you want, instead of insisting it has to look exactly one way. That openness and collaboration matters before you embark on the journey.

Shay O'Connor22:27

It's the what-ifs and the escalations. If every activity on site went perfectly, it would be simple, and you probably wouldn't need to move off paper. But what-if scenarios creep in all the time. The great thing about your own digital environment is that you put that experience into it, so the next time something happens, it knows where to go. The platform evolves as experiences occur, and you end up with your experience in a repeatable format.

Shay O'Connor23:46

Managers and supervisors are so busy that they don't have time to capture their experience. But if they spend the time capturing it, they get less busy, because it becomes reusable. We call it experience in a box. When new people come on site, the form tells them: if this happens, here's what to do and where it goes.

Shay O'Connor24:37

How do you start? Beyond internal buy-in, and Jake, I'm sure you'd agree, it has to be top down. Management have to be behind it, or you won't get the support. And don't be afraid if it looks like a big piece of work. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Get a few processes digitized, which frees up a bit of space, so you get more done. In five years everyone will be digitized, but the people who started two years ago are well ahead, doing everything with fewer resources in a consistent way. Those who delay just lose time.

Jake Denney26:07

Definitely. We need to start collaboratively, so we're working toward goals together. From a health and safety and BSA perspective, the HSE is basically saying you've got to digitize. So for me, starting with digitization means asking: what do I need to achieve, what are my outcomes, and what does legislation demand of me as a health and safety professional and as principal designer under the regulations? Starting from what legislative compliance requires gives you a clear goal, and then we can work closely on digitizing that process.

Shay O'Connor27:13

If I were getting a building constructed, I'd get a professional architect to do the designs. To make sure I'm compliant, I'd get on to people like you and McBains and say, I need to be sure I'm doing the right thing. Then use that expertise to digitize the process, so it's repeatable. Instead of a new job every time, you're topping it up, because requirements change and you still need advice.

Shay O'Connor28:19

The utopia is: I got an expert in to tell me what to do, I've got all of that digitized and templated, I proved it out first, and then I digitized a couple of things with their knowledge and got feedback. The way we always operate is to scale. You get buy-in from the people who'll use it by including them and asking what's missing. That collaboration gets you to a working environment that's safer, fully compliant, and that you can stand over when an auditor walks in.

Jake Denney29:31

And very finally on why you should start with digitization: because the golden thread requires it. If you're going to do it, do it right. You get your car maintained at a garage so you keep your warranty. Get the professionals in to tell you you're doing it right, then digitize it correctly. It's a huge opportunity for the industry to provide a consistent approach to compliance through digitization.

Darragh Allen30:39

I'll give a quick tour of FlowForma: how it sits within SharePoint and extends its capabilities, and the audit trail and analytics we provide, specifically around compliance. This is a SharePoint dashboard I've built for compliance digitalization. At the top are four tiles: the Building Safety Act, health and safety, ISO compliance, and a document library, because it's not just completing processes, it's knowing where all the documents sit.

Darragh Allen32:09

Each of these pages is controlled by roles and permissions, so only the right people can open them. Clicking one of the tiles starts a FlowForma process embedded in the dashboard, which is how you begin tracking the information. Underneath is our analytics: everything completed in FlowForma feeds a live, real-time analytics dashboard, released just under two months ago. If I look at incidents by project and click Project B, I see only Project B's health and safety incidents.

Darragh Allen33:22

Back on the Building Safety Act page, I want to highlight forms awaiting my input. FlowForma taps into Active Directory, so any step assigned to a user or stakeholder, internal or external, notifies them. They can click straight through from this list, or from a hyperlink sent by email.

Darragh Allen34:17

On the BSA page, the first tile starts the BSA process, which triggers 10, 20 or 30 subprocesses to capture all the documents and information. There are also on-site forms, a wide range of construction forms, and external forms. Those could be posted on a wall on site as a QR code: an employee scans it and fills in a safety observation, reports an issue or submits a timesheet on their phone. And there's a document library per project, where documents generated in FlowForma land automatically, alongside fire safety and site inspection forms.

Darragh Allen36:03

Opening the BSA process, we have project details and Gateways One, Two and Three: the three checkpoints required to get a building under construction. FlowForma integrates with external systems, so picking a project can pull information from your project information platform and pre-populate the form. Along the bottom are forms assigned to different people in your company, and you get insight into the progress of each one.

Darragh Allen37:22

Gateway One is largely capturing fire safety information. I upload a fire statement, then record that the planning application was submitted to the Building Safety Regulator: the date, who submitted it, and the reference number the regulator provides. While it's pending we leave it at pending approval, and once approved, the process moves automatically into Gateway Two, where a range of subprocesses have to run to comply with the golden thread.

Darragh Allen38:43

Opening a BSA process I started earlier, three new steps are assigned to me. In the competence declaration, I enter the principal designer's email. That could be someone outside your organization: they receive an email with a hyperlink, and the next step is assigned to them automatically. Once they submit, it routes back internally for approval of what the external party captured.

Darragh Allen39:50

Within Gateway Two, every step is tracked with a percentage complete. The competence declaration is only just over halfway, so I could complete it or delegate it to someone in the company. Documents for the project go into a document library, and you're not limited to SharePoint: we can generate documents into any external system you use.

Darragh Allen41:05

Our analytics are real time, and with the Building Safety Act it's all about insight into how you're progressing on the documents the golden thread needs. For one sample location everything is on time, but for another the competence declaration is lagging, so I'd delegate it to someone with time.

Darragh Allen41:51

Compliance is always a moving goalpost, and as Jake and Shay said, it's about small steps toward a repeatable setup. So you need to be able to make small changes. On the competence declaration, I can add a second review step, call it approval level two, and assign it in seconds. I can decide who signs it off, what information it captures, and whether it generates documents or notifies building owners, using business rules.

Darragh Allen44:06

Finally, the audit trail, which Jake and Shay leaned on earlier. Everything completed or started in FlowForma is tracked: created by, modified by, assigned to. Managers can see who each step is assigned to and redelegate it, and if someone comes in for an audit or inspection, everything is readily available.

Shay O'Connor45:06

Everything we've talked about is born from experience, and a number of clients are willing to share how things are performing. Coinford realized early on that they needed to take care of health and safety, quality, training and labor onboarding, to name a few processes. Shaun O'Donnell, IT director at Coinford, bought into the idea that if they were going to do this, they'd do it right and make it repeatable. They saved a fortune in time and overheads once they introduced the processes digitally, and they have an ongoing digital record of everything they produce.

Shay O'Connor46:50

There's no downside to digitizing these processes. We don't know of anybody who has gone digital and gone back to paper, emails and saved PDFs. Everyone who's gone down this route has kept expanding.

Shay O'Connor47:22

Another organization saved three days a month per person on each process, just by not having to copy data into different locations and systems. And a large hospital group, which I can't name, started with a fire safety checklist so important that once they proved it, everything else would fall into place. They now have visibility through analytics that they're up to date, and they save two weeks a year on that one process.

Shay O'Connor49:11

We'd expect most organizations to end up with 40 or 50 processes, and some customers have a couple of hundred. If you save two weeks on one, extrapolate the rest. Beyond the time, you have all your data to hand for audits. And you're doing the job right, so you end up with a better building and a better environment.

Patrick Naughton50:05

Thanks, Shay. We've had loads of questions. First: how is information from FlowForma issued to external parties such as the relevant planning authority or the BSA regulator? Is it a hyperlink or an email, and how do you restrict access?

Shay O'Connor50:31

Once you've gathered the data, it's up to you how you distribute it. If the authority allows a direct digital transfer, that can be done. If they require a PDF or another format, that can be done too. Most won't let you interact with their systems directly, so they'll have a preferred format for receiving data, and we make sure it's delivered that way. Because it's stored centrally, you know exactly where it is.

Patrick Naughton52:09

Next: we use multiple technologies in our business. How easy is FlowForma to integrate with other systems?

Shay O'Connor52:20

If it's a modern system, we've never found it difficult. As Darragh said, we work with Procore, the Autodesk tools and the larger, relevant systems, and those are no-code integrations you can extend or reduce as you like. If it's a very old system we'd take a look, but anything from the last 10 or 15 years puts you in a good place.

Patrick Naughton53:09

What would be the top behavior or action for an organization to get started with compliance digitalization?

Jake Denney53:28

Start by identifying the purpose of digitization and what you want to achieve. From a health and safety perspective, that means asking what the legislation requires, what compliance looks like, and how you can achieve it through digitization. In terms of behavior, be open, be willing to be a little vulnerable, and trust the people in your organization who understand this, giving them the autonomy to bring you a solution.

Jake Denney54:31

And yes, speak to people who know the area you want to digitize, whether that's health and safety or anything else. They'll help you develop an achievable plan.

Patrick Naughton55:10

How do we make sure our system adapts to current regulation, and to what may be coming around the corner?

Shay O'Connor55:15

You need an environment you can evolve, combining technology and expertise. Legislation will keep changing, and people like Jake and McBains will be up to speed on what's required. Bring that together with flexible technology and you'll never be 100% on day one, but when new legislation arrives in three years, you just add it in.

Jake Denney56:47

It's also about listening to the people using the system. You won't get it right on day one, but as Darragh showed, you can change and add to it. And with a digital process you only make a change once, whereas with Word or Excel you have to change the document, approve it, circulate it, train people and make sure they're using the right version.

Shay O'Connor57:49

Version control, spot on. People using the wrong document because they haven't got the new one: that's so important.

Patrick Naughton58:07

That's all we have time for. Thank you to our panel, Shay O'Connor, Darragh Allen and Jake Denney of McBains. Please fill in the feedback survey after the webinar, and take the opportunity to speak with our digitalization experts in a complimentary workshop or demo, wherever you are on your journey. Have a great rest of the day.