A building safety case, not a one-off report
The brief went beyond satisfying the Building Safety Regulator: a safety case that could keep developing as investigations, maintenance and evidence continued.
Fire and structural expertise, in one room
A facilitated HAZID workshop brought the PAP, Managing Agent, fire engineer and structural engineer together around a single bowtie analysis.
Held live, inside Cascade
An evidence register and action tracker sit alongside the safety case itself, so the safety case grows with the building rather than ageing with it.
01
The challenge
The building is a 1930s purpose-built residential block of flats, including a later penthouse addition. The Principal Accountable Person (PAP) is a Resident Management Company, supported by an appointed Managing Agent.
As with many established residential buildings, information about the building had been developed at different times and for different purposes. The PAP wanted to bring this together into a coherent understanding of the building, identify where further assurance would be useful and demonstrate how fire and structural safety risks were being actively managed.
The objective was not simply to produce a report for the Building Safety Regulator, but to establish a building safety case that could continue to develop as further information, investigations and evidence became available.
02
What we did
We began with a facilitated HAZID workshop structured around bowtie methodology, bringing together the PAP, Managing Agent, fire engineer and structural engineer.
Working through the building's principal hazards, the group considered what could go wrong, the controls already in place, how those controls might be challenged and the potential consequences. This created a shared understanding of the building and helped focus further work on the areas where additional evidence or assurance would add most value.
That collaborative approach continued throughout the project. As information emerged, we worked with the PAP and Managing Agent to incorporate it into the developing safety case rather than waiting until the final report.
The findings were brought together through a fire safety gap analysis, a structural safety assessment and the wider building safety case.
03
The outcome
Rather than receiving a one-off safety case report, the PAP now has a building safety case that explains how the building's risks have been identified, assessed and controlled and can be shared with stakeholders, including the Building Safety Regulator.
The safety case is held within Cascade, providing a live evidence register and action tracker alongside the safety case itself. As further investigations, maintenance, improvements or assessments are completed, the supporting evidence can be added and the relevant parts of the safety case updated. This means the safety case can grow with the building rather than becoming a snapshot of its condition at a particular point in time.
For a Resident Management Company, this also provides confidence in knowing what decisions were made, what evidence supports them and what still needs to be done, all retained in one place rather than sitting with individual directors, advisers or consultants.