The UK Building Safety Act imposes a duty to appoint competent professionals for work on higher risk buildings. The challenge for dutyholders is how to identify those professionals. A new initiative from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), the Higher Risk Buildings Competence Register, offers a simple way to do this. But what are the skills that engineers need to demonstrate before joining the register? Will North spoke to the register’s co-chair, Chris O’Regan, for Engineering Matters episode 358.

The fire at Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017 shook the country, and the construction industry. Seventy people lost their lives at the scene, and two more in hospital later. An inquiry into the incident was opened in September 2017, chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick. It released its findings in two phases. Phase 1 was released in October 2019, and considered the events on the night. Phase 2 looked at the broader context of the fire, including the role of the construction and engineering sector, and was published in September 2024.

Sir Martin’s recommendations in Phase 2 formed the basis for the Building Safety Act 2022. This defined ‘higher risk buildings’ (HRBs) and required dutyholders to employ competent professionals. The ICE and IStructE, with the support of the Engineering Council, have now created the Higher Risk Buildings Competence Register to allow dutyholders to identify competent professionals.

The joint ICE/IStructE committee that developed the register was chaired by Chris O’Regan. He joined Engineering Matters for episode 358 Experts in Risk, to explain how the register was developed, and the competencies that engineers need to demonstrate to join the register.

While technical skills are a key aspect of competence, the registration process looks beyond this. Applicants will need to put together a portfolio of work, demonstrating their experience working on higher risk buildings, and take part in a peer review process, through an interview. Joining the register will allow individuals to use HRB in their professional title, for a period of five years. And at that point, they will need to renew their registration.

Unique personal skills

For O’Regan, the starting point for working on HRBs is to assume the worst. “You have to assume it’s already happened. You have to assume there is a fire in this building. How does my building, the building I’m helping design, react to that fire?”

This takes a different set of skills to traditional engineering. “This brings in unique skills because It’s not about measuring risk anymore. It’s about, now, mitigating or indeed preventing the event from occurring in the first place.

“The Building Safety Act specifically talks about these two events that it assumes will occur. And the two events are fire spread and structural failure—or structural safety as it is also known.”

Different disciplines—architects, structural engineers, and fire safety professionals—need to be able to work together.

O’Regan says, “It is something that we try to instill. You can’t live in this sort of silo of thinking like ‘I’m a structure engineer, I’ve designed my slab, and that’s it’. No, you are part of a team that’s working to create something.”

To demonstrate their competence to work on HRBs, professionals need to show something more than engineering expertise. “There is one final thing, which is not often mentioned,” says O’Regan. “It is one word: empathy. Because you are a human being as well.” An understanding of yourself and of others should inform how competent professionals think about higher risk buildings. “‘If there was a fire in my apartment, what would I do?’, ‘How would I react to that?’ Just put yourself into the occupant’s space. That’s what we’re expecting people who work on HRBs to do on a regular basis.”

Works well with others

As well considering specific skills, those wanting to join the register must demonstrate their experience. “In order to be on the register, you do have to have—for a structural engineer—at least five years experience of professional qualified status.”

Applicants will need to show that they work well as part of a team. For example, structural engineers will need to show they understand the work of building safety engineers, and be able to contribute to design decisions. “Now that’s not something structural engineers normally get involved with, containment routing. But they should, because they will then see how their building service engineers colleagues are trying to figure out the flow of their pipes, the cabling, everything and have those conversations [about the structural impact] with them.”

It’s not about taking responsibility for someone else’s specialism. It’s about showing you can be part of a team and raise relevant risks. “That doesn’t mean any of those disciplines are taking responsibility for those components of the structure. Because as far as the duty holder is concerned, they are expecting their built environment professionals to do these things, to work together like this, to share ideas, to have these intelligent and informed discussions about the design of the building.”

Making the case for safety

The UK, like many other countries, is in the middle of a housing crisis. Built environment professionals must find ways to overcome these risks, without making it impossible to maintain and continue to use existing homes—and projects on existing structures will form the bulk of the work done by HRB competent engineers.

O’Regan says that when built environment professionals look at a structure, they must consider it in terms of proportionality. “Is it reasonable? How old is the building? What’s the condition it is in?”

But financial viability can never be put before overall safety. “There needs to be a level of pragmatism on all sides, but not to the point where it undermines safety.”

This balance is achieved by thinking about an overall safety case. It is not just about eliminating individual risks, but thinking about how the impact of existing risks can be mitigated.

“If there’s a safety case for the building and it is signed and ratified and the Building Safety Regulator has agreed with it, then any construction professional involved with the modification or change to that building, the first document they need to reach for, is that safety case.

“That safety case tells the construction professional how the building currently functions when it’s confronted with an event, and what mitigation measures and what preventative measures are in place. Any modifications we do to the building must then be referred back to the safety case.”

The systems that make up a building rely on each other. “You’re not working in isolation. You have to demonstrate that you recognize that buildings are an entire system that works together,relying on one component to the other, to the other, to the other.”

Next steps

We spoke to O’Regan in late 2025. By then, the register was complete, and structural engineers could start to apply. “It formally launched as a recognized title in May 2025. So we have got a lot of people lining up and we’re reviewing people, we’re getting submissions in.”

Dutyholders can already check if the professionals they employ are deemed competent, by referring to the register. But O’Regan and the committee are still hard at work. The process is in place to join the register. But in five years time, the first renewals will be needed. “Our next big task is the renewal issue and the mechanics of renewing someone’s membership with the register.”