A new white paper from ASSA ABLOY is calling for a shift in compliance to leadership in building safety. The firm says the white paper is designed to challenge the way the industry thinks about safety within the built environment – encouraging building owners, managers and developers to elevate safety from just being a ‘tick box’ exercise.
Following a series of reports on building safety from Dame Judith Hackitt and the Industry Safety Steering Group (ISSG), the white paper uses the same framework as the most recent ISSG report, and examines the roles of: leadership and collaboration, compliance and capacity building, and responsibility and transparency when it comes to building safety.
Speaking on the launch of its latest paper, Eryl Jones, managing director of ASSA ABLOY Door Hardware Group, said: “In essence, more needs to be done to accelerate culture change in the built environment industry, so we can move from a position of compliance to leadership in building safety. With an extensive supply chain involved in building projects and a wide-ranging number of groups, associations and authorities trying to tackle this issue, we felt it was our role to help provide advice and recommendations on what we believe are the best opportunities to help address this challenge, which is the reason for this white paper.”
With approval and endorsement from the GAI and DHF, the document highlights case studies where a lack of compliance and leadership led to tragic consequences and delves into how recommendations from the ISSG will help to avoid this in the future.
The paper also sets out the benefits of regulatory and legislative changes, such as whole life costings, environmental product declarations and improved competency criteria. It also argues strongly that in order for prescribed changes to have any impact, there must also be a change in mindset when it comes to building safety.
