Compliance in Building Maintenance and FM has moved to centre stage. It's no longer just a formality - it's a key business issue that needs attention from business leaders. Recent building safety failures have shown us just how important well managed maintenance is. Poor maintenance can lead to disasters that affect public safety and company reputation.
The Building Safety Act will change how you run your maintenance business. This affects you if you maintain, service or inspect buildings as well as the assets and equipment inside them.
What type of buildings does the Building Safety act apply to?
The Act covers residential buildings that have at least two homes or 'dwellings' and are either:
- Taller than 18 meters, or
- Have seven or more floors
Hospitals and care homes must follow these rules too. While the Act doesn't cover all buildings now, that might change in the future.
The government put these rules in place in October 2023. They created them after the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017. The investigation showed that construction safety needed major improvements. These new rules go beyond just fire safety - they cover how we design, build, and maintain buildings from beginning to end.
What this means for your Maintenance Business
If you run a maintenance business, you need to know about several laws. The Building Safety Act works in conjunction with other pieces of legislation including the Fire Safety Act and Building Regulations laws (part B). Together, they create a complete safety system.
Under the building safety act, you now need to keep digital records of all your work. Paper records aren't good enough anymore. You need a digital system to track everything you do. This creates what the law calls a "golden thread" of information.
Maintenance Task Categories
Your maintenance tasks fall into two groups: required by law (statutory) and not required by law (non-statutory). Many maintenance businesses use the SFG20 maintenance task framework to organise their work. It uses colour coding to show which maintenance tasks are the most important:
Red means required by law
Pink means required by industry rules
Amber means important for the building to work well
Green means optional maintenance
How to stay within the law
First, make a plan that shows all your legal duties. Include what the Building Safety Act says about worker skills and records. Add in what the Fire Safety Act says about checking for risks. Don't forget the specific time-bound rules from Fire Safety Regulations.
- Document which laws relate to each maintenance task (a good way to do this is to create a matrix, that makes it easy to see which laws apply to each maintenance task
- Check how often you must do these jobs or maintenance tasks
Required Digital Records
Ensure you keep digital records about:
- Who did the work and their qualifications
- What they checked, fixed, serviced or maintained
- Any problems they found
- When the next check is due
Training your workers
Your workers need the right skills and knowledge. Double check that your training program covers all the rules and technical skills they need. Make sure they know how to keep records in a compliant fashion and handle emergencies.
How Job Management Software helps with compliance
The digital "Golden Thread"
The law now requires a digital record of all building work. Job management software helps maintain this "golden thread" by tracking everything your workers do whether in the back-office or out in the field. Engineers and technicians can use a mobile app to record their work right away. This includes what they did, how they did it, which parts they used and any data readings. This also includes photo capture before, during and after work took place.
Managing assets – the asset register
Your software should help track the maintenance history of every piece of equipment in each building – maintaining an asset register. The building safety act states that details must be kept about where things are, what they do, and what shape they're in. It should be easy to find the service records for any given asset or piece of equipment that your team are responsible for. This can all be part of a field service CRM system.
Worker skills and training
The law says you must prove your workers have the right skills. Your software should store records of what training and certificates each worker has. When you schedule jobs, the system can match jobs and work orders to engineers and technicians with the right skills. It should also track when their qualifications expire.
Checking for risks
Good software helps workers check for dangers before they start work. The latest generation job management systems like BigChange enable risk assessment (POWRA), RAMS and method statements to be checked and signed off on their phones or tablets. The system saves these securely, giving you a robust audit trail.
Planning work
Use your software to separate required tasks from optional ones. Plan inspections and services ahead of time. Job management software can help remind your customers and your own team about upcoming compliance based activities that must be actioned by a certain date.
Real-Time updates
Modern field service software shows you what's happening right now, giving you live visibility of your operations. Managers can see if required work is done on time and done right – and whether any essential follow up work is necessary to meet compliance deadlines. Systems like BigChange send alerts about upcoming deadlines or possible problems.
Working with building owners
Building owners and regulators need to see maintenance records. Good software lets different people see different levels of information. This keeps private information safe while sharing what people need to know. Give your clients access to a self-service portal – where they can view their booked jobs and download job reports and certificates.
Proof of service – prove that you are compliant
Your job management software should create reports that show all your maintenance work. These reports document who did the work, when they did it, and exactly what they did. They can include certificates, safety checks, photos, and signatures from workers and customers. What's more, if your software has vehicle and device tracking built-in, you'll have evidence of when your engineers arrived, how much time they spent on site and when they left. This also creates transparency and trust with your clients.
Rapid access to maintenance records
The building safety act documents that not only must maintenance records be held digitally, they must be accessible rapidly. Choose maintenance management software that makes it easy and fast to access records against a particular building, depot or location.
Keeping records safe – think data security
Your software must keep records safe for as long as the law requires.
Look for the following in your job management software:
- Safe cloud storage – software hosted in a compliant location that meets UK laws around GDPR
- Ensure your software is hosted in a location with built-in redundancy – where data is replicated across multiple locations
- Ensure you can control and configure over who sees what. Only senior management should be able to delete records or amend service records.
- Look for secure access – with 2-factor authentication to keep your system safe
Looking ahead
Building safety rules will keep changing. Make sure your job management system can change too. Pick a system that can grow with your business and help show your commitment to building safety.
