Demonstrating competence is not just about technical knowledge – it’s about integrity. This was the message from Dame Judith Hackitt at the GAI competence forum. Nicky Roger reports.
The built environment industry must move beyond a culture of compliance and towards one in which professional competence is demonstrable – a shift that could have profound implications for ironmongers and those involved in specifying, supplying and installing hardware.
For the architectural ironmongery sector, the drive towards demonstrable competence is already becoming more tangible.
BS 8670-2, the upcoming British Standard for competence in construction products, is part of a wider move to establish clear expectations around the knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours required of those working in safety-critical roles.
Its significance goes beyond providing another standard for the industry to reference. It reflects the fundamental change taking place across construction since the introduction of the Building Safety Act: competence is increasingly something professionals will need to demonstrate, rather than simply state.
That was the central message from Dame Judith Hackitt, speaking to members of the Guild of Architectural Ironmongers (GAI), as she reflected on almost a decade of work to transform building safety following the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Nine years after Grenfell, Hackitt is still delivering much the same message. That, she admits, is deliberate.
“This is a long and difficult journey,” she told members. “Anyone who thinks it’s going to stop, or who thinks because it’s getting difficult we can back off, is going to hear reinforcement of the message that says we cannot do that. We have to keep going.”
Hackitt, who chaired the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety commissioned following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, has spent much of the intervening period pushing for the fundamental cultural change she believes is necessary across the built environment.
The resulting Building Safety Act, the Building Safety Regulator and wider reforms have changed the regulatory landscape. But, she argues, regulation alone will not deliver safer buildings. At the heart of the new system is a much greater emphasis on competence – and, crucially, the ability to demonstrate it.
For the ironmongery sector, that has potentially significant consequences. The days when professional competence could simply be asserted, or where people could rely on experience without being able to evidence their knowledge, skills and behaviours, are coming to an end.
More than technical knowledge
Hackitt was clear that competence is not simply about knowing the technical requirements of a product or standard.
“Knowing what you’re doing, and also knowing what you don’t know and what you’re not competent to do, is very important,” she said.
Competence, she argued, encompasses skills, knowledge and experience – but also behaviours. That means recognising when a job or decision falls outside your competence and saying so. It means challenging poor practice when you see it. And it means being prepared to refuse when asked to specify or supply something that you know is inappropriate.
“If you see someone else doing something they shouldn’t be doing, you call it out,” she said. “When you’re asked to specify the wrong product in a service that you know it shouldn’t be in, you refuse.”
For Hackitt, that professional integrity is every bit as important as technical knowledge. She offered her own career as an example. A chemical engineer by training, she has spent decades away from the detailed technical work she undertook earlier in her career.
“If you were to ask me today to sit down and design a chemical plant, I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I know I couldn’t do it. And I would refuse.”
That, she argues, is competence in action: knowing the limits of your own knowledge and refusing to work beyond them.
From compliance to responsibility
The significance of this shift becomes clearer when viewed against the Building Safety Act.
Hackitt said the Act has changed the fundamental relationship between regulation and responsibility.
Previously, she argued, people could “play games” with prescriptive rules – finding ways to demonstrate that they had ticked the required boxes, even where the overall outcome might not have been what the system intended.
The new regime is different.
“When you switch to a system that says you have a responsibility, and you have a responsibility to demonstrate that what you have done is safe, that shifts the
burden,” she said.
That means competent professionals are increasingly being asked to make judgements rather than simply follow instructions. “Compliance is very important,” she said. “But it’s the minimum.”
The new regulatory environment creates more room for professional judgement
and innovation, but that freedom comes with responsibility. Those making decisions must be capable of assessing risk and demonstrating that their decisions will deliver the required outcome.
For ironmongers, that puts professional knowledge and judgement firmly into the spotlight.
The sector is not simply supplying products. Those involved in specification, advice and installation may be making decisions that affect the performance of critical elements of a building.
And, as Hackitt pointed out, having the right product is not enough. “The right products in the wrong hands will lead to the wrong outcomes if people are not competent to do the job they are doing to specify what’s required,” she said.
