A word on… embedded compliance knowledge
Sean Hunter, Head of Marketing at BSRIA, explains how the organisation is connecting building services professionals directly with its testing, instrumentation and applied engineering capability, in formats that reflect how the industry actually works today.
The engineer on-site knows something has changed. A product substituted, a system reconfigured or a commissioning sequence shifted because of programme pressure. What they rarely have, at that exact moment, is the technical guidance to tell them whether that change matters and the extent of its impact.
This is a result of a structural problem with how the industry accesses knowledge. Guidance, standards and testing data exist. But the data lives in documents, on shelves or behind log-ins, consulted after the fact when something may have gone wrong, not at the moment a decision is being made. I joined BSRIA because that gap is one worth closing and the regulatory environment is increasingly making it urgent.
The Building Safety Act has changed who is accountable and how. While its most stringent requirements focus on higher risk buildings, the Act’s wider dutyholder and competence provisions are influencing projects across the built environment. With the Future Homes and Buildings Standards set to raise expectations further, compliance now has to be considered throughout design, procurement and construction, starting well before handover.
While this is the right direction, tighter regulation only works if the expertise needed to meet it is accessible at the right moment and in a form people can use.
Smart building procurement
Earlier this year, BSRIA published BG 91/2026, Procuring Smart Building Technology. It covers the full procurement process for smart building tech, from defining a building’s bespoke requirements through to delivering the benefits. It’s written for both technical and non-technical decision-makers, because smart building procurement involves facilities managers, procurement leads and project sponsors, not just engineers. If the guidance only speaks to one audience, it doesn’t do the job. If compliance is a professional responsibility, access to compliance knowledge should be treated as professional infrastructure rather than an optional reference point.
That’s what I mean by knowledge that works in practice. It’s structured around the process people actually follow, rather than the technical subject in the abstract. Compliance knowledge should carry the same professional weight as a structural calculation or a fire strategy. It’s part of the work, consulted while decisions are being made. The same principle holds for commissioning guidance, testing protocols and energy performance standards.
BSRIA has built that expertise over decades of research and testing. The challenge now is making it available in a form people can use, at the point they need it.
The golden thread
The Building Safety Act has given legal weight to the golden thread of information: accurate, up-todate records of a building’s design, construction and systems, available to whoever needs them, when they need them. The principle is sound. The same logic applies to expertise itself. If you’re maintaining a golden thread of building data, you also need a golden thread of the guidance, evidence and testing that informed the decisions captured within the data. That means guidance available at the point of use, connected to the workflow. Knowledge only creates value when it arrives before the decision is made. That’s what BSRIA is working towards: online communities where professionals can put a question to an approved expert, and digitised research that’s searchable and current. Guidance needs to be structured around how people actually work.
The industry’s obligation
The construction and building services sector have the technical expertise and testing infrastructure to close the gap between guidance and practice. What it needs to change is the assumption that technical knowledge is something you go and find when you need it.
The real challenge is ensuring that expertise appears at the point of where choices are made. Because when an engineer, project manager or facilities professional finds themselves confronting a change on-site, the question is whether they can access it in time to act on it.
