CIOB Standards, Qualifications & the Building Safety Bill
With the Building Safety bill passing through parliament, the CIOB education department is busier than ever working on qualifications, standards and competencies.
Competences
We are working with the British Standards Institute to develop the competencies for the new duty holder roles, chairing the Principal Contractor working group and inputting into the working groups for Principal Designer and Building Safety Manager. These crucial new roles as well as the new legislation represent a step change in building safety and how we develop people to deliver safe, healthy, and comfortable buildings that are sustainable and future proofed.
Apprenticeships
Behind the scenes we have been working with Local Authority Building Control to develop qualifications for Building Control Professionals that develop their knowledge, skills and behaviours. I am delighted to say that the first cohort of the degree apprenticeship in Building Control Surveying have completed their apprenticeships. It was a pleasure to see a diverse and talented cohort of apprentices complete their end point assessments at University of Wolverhampton. This apprenticeship is an integrated degree apprenticeship which means the university itself delivers the end point assessment but through our partnership with LABC and the University of Wolverhampton we were able to assess the apprentices against our MCIOB standards as part of the EPA and we now have 12 new members from a small first cohort. The next cohort and the one after are much bigger and these apprentices will change and shape the face of Building Control.
Qualifications
In recent years, we have also worked with LABC to develop a suite of vocational qualifications from level 3 in technical administration, level 4 in domestic building control and level 5 in high rise and commercial building control. We are now close to launching a suite of level 6 qualifications in Fire Safety for Building Control, Safety at Sports Grounds, Legislative Enforcement and the Management of Building Control. This fits with our policy work in determining the future of Building Control within the new regulatory environment.
In early 2021 we also launched our Fire Safety for Construction Certificate and our Building Safety Management Diploma. These were developed with industry experts in response to the Hackitt Review in 2018 and are designed to help upskill people into the role of Building Safety Manager. These new qualifications are proving enormously popular and will play a crucial role in ensuring that whole life safety and building performance are at the heart of CIOB qualifications and standards. In 2022, we plan to launch a competence-based certification scheme for those working on higher risk or complex buildings. I am pleased to say that Laura Stirling has received a well-deserved promotion to Accreditation Manager and now has her own assistant to help with the increased workload. In fact, we have completely restructured the whole education department to prepare for a greater role in helping the industry adapt to a new regulatory environment.
The proposed bill presents an opportunity for higher education to prepare people for these new roles and to encourage a new way of working that puts cultural change and accountability at the forefront of education. There will be changes to our education frameworks and accreditation criteria to reflect these imperatives and the education team is growing to meet these challenges.
If you wish to review our qualifications, click here, we would welcome your feedback and thoughts.