Become a BSF Champion

There is a crucial need in the construction industry for a culture and leadership shift that places building safety as a priority. The Building a Safer Future Champions assessment has been created to support the construction industry through this period of change.

What is the Building a Safer future Champion Assessment

Through robust self-assessment, benchmarking and independent verification, the Building a Safer Future Champion assessment helps organisations identify potential issues and, in turn, develop plans to improve and advance their approach to leadership and culture in relation to building safety.

The Champion Assessment also provides a wealth of actionable data to help organisations identify ‘blind spots’, focus efforts where they are most needed, and to create a culture of continuous improvement, leading to reduced risk profile.

How can the Building a Safer Future Champion assessment support you?

All companies participating in the Building a Safer Future Champion assessment will be supported with practical tools that improve their approach to leadership and culture in relation to building safety.

The Building a Safer Future Champion assessment is tailored specifically towards the needs of each company so that we can support you on your building safety journey.

The Building a Safer Future Champion assessment supports companies to:

Move towards a building safety culture and leadership shift
Become sectoral leaders
Show organisational and sectoral progress
Set the tone in relation to building safety
Reduce risk profiles
Demand a commitment to building safety from their contractors or subcontractors
Drive sustainable change throughout the industry
Drive building safety down their supply chains

Building a Safer Future Champion ASSESSMENT – Supported by Major Procurement Frameworks

The Building a Safer Future Champion process is supported by, and embedded in, a growing number of major procurement frameworks

Crown Commercial Service and SCAPE have included both ‘Building a Safer Future Champion’ Assessment and ‘Registered Signatory’ status as requirements at different levels within their procurement frameworks.

Homes England and the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme also require engagement with, and support of Building a Safer Future (Registered Signatory status) to become a member of their 10-year dynamic purchasing system (DPS) and for access to funding, respectively.

Increasingly, regional construction procurement frameworks are also engaging and supporting Building a Safer Future such as South-East Consortium.

These organisations are working in strategic partnership with Building a Safer Future, and are collaborating to encourage industry-wide adoption of this important building safety culture change initiative.

Who can become a Building a Safer future Champion?

Any company in the value chain or life cycle of a building is eligible to apply to participate in the Building a Safer Future Champion assessment, this includes:

Those who own, maintain, or operate buildings
Clients
Principal contractors
Principal Designers
Duty Holders
Contractors
Housing Associations
Local Authorities/Developers
Suppliers of specialist services such as architects, fire engineers, or consultancy providers.

The Building a Safer Future Champion assessment is not limited to companies working with High-Rise Residential Buildings, higher-risk, and in-scope buildings. We believe that our approach and focus on building safety is applicable to all buildings. We recommend all companies operating in the built environment to become Building a Safer Future Champions and commit themselves to put building safety first.

The Benchmarking and Verification Framework

The Building a Safer Future Benchmarking Framework has been designed to enable companies involved in any part of the construction value chain to understand and improve their safety culture and leadership effectiveness.

The benchmarking and verification framework measures the maturity of your leadership and culture and tests that each aligns with activities critical to building safety. The framework is based on approaches in other major hazard sectors, such as Chemicals (Responsible Care); Oil and Gas (Hearts and Minds); and Rail (RM3) and is a process of benchmarking and verification, underpinned by independent assessment and verification.

How it works

There are three pathways in the Building a Safer Future Champion assessment which focus on:

Stages

Once your organisation has registered to participate in the benchmarking and verification framework, there are five stages in the assessment:

1

Assessing Leadership and Culture

2

Corroborating Leadership and Culture through organisational practice

3

Validation and verification

4

Project Assessment

5

Confirming the outcome

Following the independent assessor’s review, you will be provided with actionable data and a summary narrative report identifying possible areas of weakness, blind spots and where you can make critical building safety improvements.

Only those organisations successfully achieving the minimum expected level as a result of participation in the assessment can become ‘Building a Safer Future Champions’.