Dame Judith Hackitt has criticised the industry’s continued use of outdated design and build contracts and called for a massive improvement in CPD to improve safety and quality standards.

Speaking at the Association for Project Safety (APS) annual conference on Wednesday, Hackitt, who led the independent review of building regulations and fire safety after the Grenfell tragedy, said that “carrying on with the same old processes and practices is never going to deliver different outcomes”.

She added: “Trying to hold on to a flawed process in design and build as it currently is crafted was never going to meet the requirements. That’s not to say you have to stop using design and build contracts, but they have to be modified to take account of what is required and by when, as well as creating a different outcome.”

Hackitt, who in her 2018 report slammed a “race to the bottom” culture across the built environment, also called for a “massive improvement” to the current CPD provision offered by construction bodies, saying it was a “poor excuse” and was not effective in proving professional competence standards.

She said the slow pace of change to the industry nearly a decade after the Grenfell fire, which resulted in 72 deaths, was a function of the fragmented nature of the industry “but also because of a real reluctance to change some of the practices which lie at the heart of things, a real reluctance to do things differently”.

Praise for collaborative working

Hackitt praised better collaborative working between the industry and government, in particular joint guidance produced in partnership with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).

She said: “It is clear now that by working together on joint guidance we’re getting further and faster, rather than industry waiting for the regulator (to act) and the regulator maintaining that it’s industry’s job to help themselves.”

The APS annual conference, titled Beyond Compliance: When Regulation is Only the Starting Point, featured a range of speakers, including fire safety, CDM and information management experts Aman Sharma, Emma Hooper, Helena Knight and Liz Bennett. Attendees also heard from leading civil servants from BSR and central and devolved nations.