- Caroline Warner
Raising the Compliance Bar
As the scrutiny surrounding the tragedy at Grenfell Tower continues to intensify, this catastrophic event has prompted an independent review to be conducted. The publication released by Dame Judith Hackett highlights the key issues facing resident safety within high rise accommodation and also a global concern regarding overall building safety practices across this popular type of accommodation.
It became apparent that there was a very real need to review all recommendations outlined within the report and subsequently a steering group on Competence for ‘Building a Safer Future’ was formed. This group have been a fundamental part in driving the necessary improvements forward and have recently released an interim report ‘Raising the Bar’.
Although, all of the competence frameworks within the report are crucial, we also need to take the reins with regards to building compliance, which we can certainly agree plays a significant role in preventing fire safety issues arising and more importantly, save lives.
I here you ask the question ‘can we really improve our compliance processes given the very real budgetary constraints we all face?’ and of course the answer is ‘yes we can, we have the Internet of Things’. This convergence of multiple technologies has given us the ability to do much more with less. Building automation and the removal of manual processes allows us to stretch the budget further and as importantly eliminate human error.
Whilst the ability to automate compliance may have been around for some time now it is up to individual businesses to decide on the importance and value of implementing such smart technologies. With the introduction of any new advancement, there is change which inevitably needs to be managed, however surely being smart, raising the bar and becoming part of a safer future is key for everyone?
Just remember with the power of IoT you can gain fast results with real time analytics, introduce preventative maintenance plans via machine learning, allow your team to be focussed on other critical areas of the business and most of all allow you to have a clear conscience regarding your building safety.