The Industry Competence Steering Group (ICSG) has announced a comprehensive restructure to enhance competence and safety standards across the built environment.
Established in response to the Grenfell Tower Fire and subsequent Hackitt Review, ICSG has now become a formal working group of the Industry Competence Committee (ICC), a statutory committee under the new Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
This move signals a strategic shift within the BSR towards more rigorous industry-wide competence frameworks as a way to enhance safety standards across the built environment.
The ICC and ICSG relationship: Identifying challenges and finding solutions
“The new relationship between the ICC and the ICSG is key to transforming the competence of the industry,” explains Hanna Clarke, Co-Chair of the ICSG and Digital and Policy Manager at the Construction Products Association.
“ICC aims to set expectations for industry and challenge it. The ICSG is where industry can collaborate to meet those challenges. The ICSG also provides the ICC with a clear picture of what industry is doing, feeds back on what challenges industry is facing, and which levers can be pulled to improve competence.”
ICSG’s new structure: Drawing on expertise from across the industry
The ICSG’s new structure includes sector-led groups, key topic groups, and working groups. This brings together contributions from over 60 professional and trade bodies and 1500 individuals in the built environment, with membership of the sector led groups still growing.
These groups will produce competence frameworks mapped to the BS 8670 which gives recommendations for core criteria for building safety to promote high standards of protection for people in and around buildings.
Each of the sector-led groups will aim to produce a competence framework or a set of core criteria, along with guidance and an implementation plan. Guidance could cover how different roles and duty holders should work together, for instance, or case studies and examples of good practice.
ICSG is also working with the BSI to create a communications hub. It will be a central repository of all ICSG’s work for the industry to access. ICSG also has a strong relationship with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), with the CLC contributing to the work on competence and ensuring that industry initiatives on Building Safety align.
- More information on the ICSG’s competence frameworks will be available in Spring 2025.
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