Public Sector Projects: The Unavoidable Collision of Governance and Building Safety Law

For Government departments and arms-length bodies (ALBs), accountability has always been paramount. The role of the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) is steeped in the prescriptive governance requirements of HM Treasury’s Managing Public Money and the exacting standards of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). Yet, the seismic shift introduced by the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) now demands more than just fiscal stewardship; it demands demonstrable technical competence, converting policy aspirations into mandatory legal duties.

The core challenge for public sector projects is reconciling the SRO’s traditional mandate; managing budget, schedule, and strategic delivery, with the Client’s new, non-negotiable legal duties under the BSA. It is a dual mandate where failure to comply with safety law can instantly translate into a financial and reputational crisis.

The SRO and the 'Intelligent Client' Imperative

The IPA has long championed the concept of the ‘Intelligent Client’, a public body with the internal technical capability to robustly scrutinise and challenge its supply chain. This capability, often lacking across Government, was previously an aspiration for efficiency; now, it is a legal necessity.

The SRO, accountable for the corporate Client entity, must ensure the organisation possesses the systems and knowledge to meet its statutory obligations. The IPA’s project oversight, including assurance reviews, increasingly acknowledges this reality. When the Client makes its formal legal declarations to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), for instance, when applying for approval at Gateway 2 for Higher-Risk Buildings, the SRO must be able to prove, defensibly, that the internal governance was competent enough to sign off on those claims. A lack of internal technical skill, leading to a failure to challenge the supply chain, is no longer merely poor management; it becomes a breach of safety law.

Statutory Prescriptiveness: The Client’s Legal Duties

The Client dutyholder, typically the contracting authority or ALB, operates under prescriptive statutory requirements established by the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023. These rules are crucial because, contrary to some initial perceptions, they apply to all regulated building work, not just Higher-Risk Buildings.

The key legal prescription is the Client’s duty to make and maintain ‘suitable arrangements’ for planning, managing, and monitoring a project to ensure compliance. This requires the Client to allocate sufficient time and resource for the building work to be compliant, a direct challenge to the historical practice of cost-cutting that compromised safety.

Most prescriptively, the Client must take ‘all reasonable steps’ to satisfy themselves that appointed dutyholders, namely the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor, are competent and possess the necessary organisational capacity to fulfil their roles. It is this due diligence duty that firmly binds the public sector client to the industry’s technical benchmarks.

The Technical Benchmark: BS 8670 and PAS 867X

Since the BSA does not contain the detailed, role-specific technical requirements itself, the public sector Client must rely on the British Standards Institution (BSI) framework to discharge its legal duties. This framework serves as the definitive industry benchmark for competence assurance:

1. BS 8670-1:2024 sets the foundational standard. It provides the core Knowledge, Skills, Experience, and Behaviours (KSEB) criteria required across the entire built environment sector. This is the baseline understanding of competence the Client must use in its internal procurement processes.

2. PAS 8671 (Principal Designer) and PAS 8672 (Principal Contractor) provide the granular, role-specific specifications. The BSR provides guidance referencing these standards. Therefore, to demonstrate that ‘all reasonable steps’ were taken to verify competence, the Client must benchmark its appointees against the demanding requirements within these PAS documents.

For a public body commissioning a high-rise residential structure, for example, the competence declaration submitted to the BSR at Gateway 2 must be defensibly substantiated by evidence that the appointed PD and PC meet the technical criteria specified in PAS 8671 and PAS 8672. Non-compliance here is simply not an option.

Integrating Compliance with the Procurement Act 2023

The advent of the Procurement Act 2023 gives public bodies a powerful commercial lever to embed safety. The move from the ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ (MEAT) to the ‘Most Advantageous Tender’ (MAT) allows contracting authorities to assign significant weight to non-price factors, such as demonstrable competence and alignment with BSA standards.

Public sector SROs and procurement teams must now treat external verification, for instance, using assessment schemes aligned with BS 8670, as a non-negotiable criterion. This ensures that projects are awarded not merely on cost, but on the integrity and safety capability required by law. Ultimately, for the public sector Client, the prescriptive requirements of building safety legislation are redefining Value for Money, proving that robust, demonstrable competence is the only prudent and legally compliant approach to managing public funds.

For more advice on how to comply with these requirements, mail martin@blackpearadvisory.com