New competence toolkit launched by BESA

The first in a planned series of practical guides to help the building services industry demonstrate its competence and ability to comply with increasingly stringent building safety legislation and standards has been launched by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA)

Free to download, the ‘Toolkits’ provide practical support to individuals and organisations in the building engineering sector to better understand, evidence, and apply the principles of Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Behaviours (SKEB) in practice.

The construction industry’s collective competence failure was identified as a critical contributor to the Grenfell Tower fire and national skills frameworks are now being developed in response to a key recommendation of the Hackitt Review which followed the disaster.

However, BESA says its Demonstrating SKEB guides are being developed to offer more immediate support to firms and engineers whose clients need to see evidence of competence and compliance with the Building Safety Act and existing industry standards.

The first of BESA’s guides has been developed in collaboration with the business consultancy Milford & Marah, the Association of Ductwork Contractors and Allied Services (ADCAS) and the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP).

The guide has been produced for installers of industrial and commercial ductwork and provides a template of ‘what good looks like’ both on an individual and organisational level. It takes ductwork installers through the six areas where they need to provide evidence of compliance: Applying health, safety and environmental legislation; establishing and maintaining relationships; preparing work; identifying systems, equipment and components; installation and testing; and pre-commissioning checks.

It also includes examples of the qualifications and assessments needed to be deemed competent for the different tasks involved in ductwork installation, relevant experience, and how to gather and present evidence of positive and professional behaviour.

The content of the toolkit also aligns with the work of the Engineering and Building Services Skills Authority (EBSSA) and the Industry Competence Steering Group (ICSG) who are developing the broader national competence frameworks. The future guides in the series will also align with this work for other building engineering sectors.

BESA’s Director of Specialist Knowledge, Rachel Davidson said: “This guide has been designed to help individuals and companies simplify the process of measuring and assessing competence in a practical and easy to understand way.

“It is the first step towards creating a much-needed competence and compliance culture and is designed to support the more in-depth work being carried out by the ICSG to produce a national competence framework for the whole industry.”

She added: “There is still a lot of work to be done to help our industry develop a true competence and compliance culture. However, these ‘starter guides’ provide an important first step.

“Also, they have been made possible by cross-sector collaboration which will be essential to the wider and more in-depth work ahead.”