Time for a Structural Risk Strategy?

I was talking to a client who is managing a Safety Case report for an LPS block of theirs. They'd appointed one engineer who recommended a Disproportionate Collapse Survey (not a thing), but the investigation works did expose strengthening works already present (good job). They went for a peer review (DSL3 check) and then they (the checking engineer) weren't happy with the findings suggesting the sample size wasn't large enough. My question... so what's the risk level? No idea.

In this example the risk level is gong to tell you whether or not you're going to need investigation works or not, assuming a worst case event, that risk level might be within acceptable limits already, so a small sample size for record keeping could be a fair approach. If you don't know what you're measuring against, should you even be doing this type of work (or checking it) anyway... again competency, but I'm not digging into that here.

The biggest take-away I took from the conference yesterday was process, and how no one understands it (including the engineers their asking apparently). There were people there without any building information worried about where to start and being quoted stupid fees by engineers for work which might not even be required. It annoys me.

This is Structural Safety, its one of the 3 functional legal requirements we have to meet for compliance with Building Regulations and as an industry we're no further along with this than a year or two ago as far as I could tell from yesterday.

I've been thinking about something for a while though and yesterday kinda just reiterated that for me... is the work we're doing now a Structural Risk Strategy and should it be used as per the Fire Risk Strategy?

i.e. We have one strategy for the building with regular risk assessments to ensure the building is still in compliance with the strategy?

I say this because structurally, I don't think my risk levels on an existing building are going to change too much from the work that's been done now in this period of the buildings life-cycle. We're drawing a line, taking measures to ensure the buildings fall under that line and then what? We're just ensuring that those measures have been implemented and the thing remains in good condition then. What additional risks will there be in another 5, 10, 20 years time that won't come about from a Material Change to the building? And all of that will be picked up as part of the Golden Thread and recorded in the Safety Case anyway.

So, is the work we're doing now, just a one off document that needs to be reviewed?

I was also thinking about this in terms of new-builds (another question that came up yesterday). What are the risks being considered within a new-build. The way we construct and detail buildings now mean their very robust and the inherent risk levels within them are super low compared to current existing building stock built pre-1970.

Which begs the question. In 20/25 years time is this a redundant exercise? The non-compliant buildings we're assessing and reviewing now will probably be end of working life and as safe as they're going to be. Any new buildings will have super low risk levels and any remedial work to them will still have to be compliant to current Building Regulations - so we ensure the same risk levels are maintained.

Throw on the fact that the definition of a Higher-Risk building is due to change shortly (I think it'll be bought down to the CC2b in Structures mark), and I think we're looking at a lot of work on safety in the next 20/25 years to bring the housing stock up to a required level.... and then what?

Will refurb die? Will the skill of assessing a building on its own merits be lost because its not needed anymore? All non-compliant stock will be as safe as it can be and all new stock already complies anyway....

The whole HRB thing used to scare the hell out of me, dipping into risk properly, how to go about justifying safety, where to start, what to do?? Now... I think its actually pretty straight forward.

I had a chat with a guy about Societal Concerns or Reputation Risk yesterday too - very smart guy, big fan. Whilst we both agreed the measure and approach was correct, do we really want to stand there in front of a whole residential block and discuss that with them - no chance. There's no way anyone comes out of that conversation without looking like a heartless moron. It did get me thinking though... how far can we push this? what's the limit?

And not in terms of increasing that risk, but reducing it. Where is the line drawn between where we've currently set it, and the best possible risk level we can achieve before we have to start demolishing buildings and building anew - might need to run some numbers on that one and have a chat with some clients to dig into that one a bit deeper.

But yeah, process seemed to be the one thing the industry is lacking right now. Who does what when type of thing. I was lucky enough to be able to say a few words at the end which hopefully helped and pointed people in the right direction, and if anything it cemented the need for another book / technical publication on this. Long term for the Structural Sector though....

I worry that safety becomes less critical because of the amount of robust new buildings and the work we're now doing with the existing building stock. Risk is inherently built within new codes so less thought of from a Structural perspective provided they follow what the code says. Condition Surveys will become more prevalent especially in the maintenance and insurance sense, plus the whole push for sustainability from the industry right now (which none of them are still to come out and weigh in on the safety side of it all yet) and to be honest, it kinda makes me a bit sad, this is the most interesting bit of the A1, A2, A3 Building Regulation requirements.

I think I'm going to have to study something else soon.