The UK’s largest housing association has developed a new safety case programme and framework for higher-risk buildings (HRB) in response to recommendations of the report by Dame Judith Hackitt following the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Clarion Housing Group’s framework for creating, managing, communicating, and maintaining residential buildings’ safety cases across its business has been developed in collaboration with risk management specialist Adelard.
Adelard is mentoring Clarion in becoming proficient in developing safety cases for themselves using its software tool, Assurance and Safety Case Environment (ASCE). ASCE will help to show safety practitioners areas of building safety that successfully meet regulatory requirements as well as those areas that are needing improvement.
Clarion said the safety case in ASCE acts as a ‘living document’, and together with its on-demand reporting feature, makes it easier to generate safety case reports, something that the new housing regulator is going to want to see. ASCE’s reporting capability can also be utilised to produce communications that can be used as part of a resident engagement strategy.
Ian Morrison, Clarion director of property services said: “As a responsible landlord, the safety of our residents has always been our number one priority. The findings of the Hackitt report have encouraged a new way of thinking about high-rise building safety and advocates the need to consider buildings as complex systems and to provide periodic safety cases that demonstrate building safety is being maintained. This new approach is a challenging mindset change within the sector and this was one of the reasons we reached out to the specialists at Adelard to help us with this undertaking.”
