Your Free Guide to Satisfying Building Safety Standards
The Building Safety Case Report (BSCR) is a document that summarises the safety case for a high-rise residential building. It identifies the building’s safety risks and explains how the risks are being managed. Building safety risks are the risk of the spread of fire or structural failure.
Free Guide
The Building Safety Case Report will need to be produced for the Building Safety Regulator when applying for a Building Assessment Certificate.
In our downloadable guide you will understand;
- An overview of Building Safety Cases and recap of main duties
- The BAC application – when, how and what to submit
- Assessing the application
- Outcome of the assessment
To download the free Building Safety Case Reports guide please enter a few quick details >>
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What Is The Purpose Of A Safety Case?
As an Accountable Person* you must keep and update certain information about the building and the parts of the building you are responsible for. The information forms part of the building’s safety case, which is used to manage the risk of the spread of fire or structural failure. The principal accountable person must use the safety case to prepare a BSCR.
Examples of an Accountable Person are a freeholder or estate owner; landlord; management company; resident management company; right to manage company; and commonhold association.
*Accountable Person – is an organisation or individual who owns or has a legal obligation to repair any common parts of the building. Common parts are used by residents, such as the structure and exterior of the building; corridors; lobbies; and staircases.
William Martin’s Approach to Completing BSCRs
Once the building has been registered with the BSR, a BSCR will be required as it will form part of the information necessary to allow the Principle Accountable Person to apply for a Building Assessment Certificate which will be issued by the BSR.
William Martin has developed the following approach to prepare your BSCR:
Stage 1 – Collation of Required Information
You will firstly be issued with the BSCR Preparation Guide. This is Required Information which details the list of documents, the site and client information required in order to commence work on your BSCR. The Guide will contain a Required Information Form which will require you to confirm whether you have the identified documents together with their location.
Note: To commence work on your BSCR, we will need to be in possession of the completed Required Information form. Therefore, a deadline will be set for the return of the required information (ideally two weeks from the date of issuing).
The Consultant will then begin a desktop review of the information supplied by the client and/or available on the clients’ data management platforms or William Martin’s risk management platform, Meridian.
A non-exhaustive list of the required information has been detailed below:
- HRB Registration Number
- Policies and procedures of the organisation in respect of building safety and maintenance
- Training records
- Details of the building
- Design specifications
- Fire strategy (including MOE and travel distances plus engineered solutions and CFD modelling if applicable)
- Fire risk assessments
- EWS1s, supporting documents and FRAEWs
- Building / structural surveys
- Details on refurbishments and completion certificates
- Details on load bearing systems including secondary systems, eg, cladding systems and balcony attachments
- Compartmentation standards
- Fire door surveys (FDIS and Reg 10)
- Fire stopping surveys (or information supplied by developer QA as part of the Golden Thread)
- Resident profiles and evidence of PEEPs
- Information about services, eg, gas, water, electricity, including supplier and maintenance contract detail
- Maintenance information (in line with Annexe I of BS 9991) of all structural and fire safety elements to the buildings
- Details on lifts
- Details on fire-fighting equipment
- Evidence of information supplied to residents
- Wayfinding signage
- Floor plans and presence of SIBS
- Resident risk profile
- Resident engagement strategy
- Safety management plan
- Emergency procedures for the building.
Stage 2 – Site Visit and Data Verification
Once the required information has been made available, the Consultant will identify the areas of the property which may require inspection for the purposes of verifying the building information.
The inspection would generally not be conducted to the level of a full fire risk assessment / fire door survey for example, but evidence from this review would go towards informing and formulating the BSCR; the site visit would also include a review of any records held on site.
Stage 3 – BSCR Production and Publication
The BSCR along with a supporting Building Safety Case Pack (which will contain all the supporting documentation and information upon which the BSCR has been produced), will be issued approximately six weeks from the start of the process (but this will be subject to our Consultant receiving all the required information).
Stage 4 – BSCR Review
As the BSCR is likely to contain recommendations which could include the need to locate additional reports and other building safety related documentation, it is important to complete this review between three to six months after the publication of the BSCR. This review will ensure the report findings are kept up to date and incorporate all the latest available building safety related documentation.
Stage 5 – BSCR Annual Review
It will be necessary for the Accountable Person to periodically update their BSCR, for example, when:
- improvement work is carried out to manage building safety risks
- work on the building impacts building safety risks.
These must be notified to the BSR by revising their BSCR and to support this process, William Martin recommends conducting a thorough review of the BSCR every 12 months.
Note: in completing BSCRs, we will incorporate, where appropriate, an additional risk assessment methodology based on reviewing particular fire risk scenarios (a process known as HAZID – Hazard Identification, and which is supported by a BSR guide ‘Assessing safety risks in high rise residential buildings’).
Speak to one of the team
For any Building Safety Case Report queries or questions, speak to one of the team today.
