In recent years, it has become staunchly apparent that the high-rise building market lacks properly qualified safety practitioners. Indeed, this lack of understanding around building quality and fire safety stretches beyond just high-rise projects. This has created a need for new, crucial roles in the sector, such as building safety managers and independent construction assessors. In order to ensure these roles are effective in maintaining quality and safety, they must be prepared with the appropriate building and fire safety qualifications. So what can the construction industry do to supplement this?

By the end of the year, the CIOB will have introduced two new qualifications: the Fire Safety Certificate for Construction, and the Diploma in Building Safety Management. These new qualifications will enable practitioners to meet sufficient competence standards needed for the future of building.

The certificate in Fire Safety for Construction is designed to develop the learner’s knowledge and skills to understand and manage the fire safety of residential buildings effectively and efficiently, and can be undertaken on its own or to contribute toward the Diploma in Building Safety Management.

The Diploma, which comprises the fire safety construction certificate and four further modules, aims to look at an industry-wide solution to make buildings and their residents safer. These modules will be placed on the Regulated Qualifications Register in 2020 as publicly available qualifications, after which they will be accessible to a wider audience of training providers in the UK.

It is important to provide learning routes into the new duty-holder roles as well as upskilling construction professionals to provide assurance of the knowledge and competence of anyone working on in-scope buildings. We will be discussing how these qualifications relate to the CIOB's work on improving building safety and quality within the industry at our World Quality Day Conference tomorrow.

Click on this link to join our discussion.