UK Construction and Law

Design and build contracts have to be modified and industry CPD is a poor excuse, Hackitt tells the project safety conference

By Staff Writer  |  12 September 2026

Dame Judith Hackitt, who led the independent review of building regulations and fire safety after Grenfell, told the Association for Project Safety annual conference on Wednesday that design and build as currently drafted was never going to meet the requirements, and that continuing professional development offered by industry bodies is not proving competence. She stopped short of saying the contracts should be abandoned, and said instead that they have to be modified to record what is required and by when.

The conference, held under the title Beyond Compliance: When Regulation Is Only the Starting Point, was addressed on Wednesday 9 September. Her argument was that the procurement route has not been rewritten to match the duties that now sit on it, and that using an unmodified form and expecting a different result is not a plan.

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.

Dame Judith Hackitt, 9 September 2026

What that means for a contract administrator

The point being made is narrower than the headline suggests, and more useful for it. She did not call for design and build to be dropped. She said the standard allocation of design responsibility, taken off the shelf and left unamended, does not carry the information duties and the timing obligations that now attach to the work. Two words in her sentence do the work: what is required, and by when.

Read against current practice, that points at the amendments a client's advisers already argue over: the scope and timing of design responsibility on novated consultants, the point at which design information must be complete rather than merely issued, and whether the contract records the gateway sequence as a contractual obligation or leaves it to the programme.

She said that carrying on with the same old processes and practices is never going to deliver different outcomes, and put the slow pace of change nearly a decade after the fire down to more than the fragmented shape of the industry. There is, she said, a real reluctance to change some of the practices which lie at the heart of things, and a real reluctance to do things differently. Her 2018 report had criticised a race to the bottom across the built environment. The fire in 2017 resulted in 72 deaths.

Competence and the CPD problem

The second target was continuing professional development. She called for a large improvement in what construction bodies currently offer, describing the present provision as a poor excuse and saying it is not effective in proving professional competence standards.

That matters beyond training budgets. Competence is now something a dutyholder has to be able to demonstrate rather than assert, and CPD records are one of the few documents available to do it. If the record is a tally of hours attended rather than evidence of capability, it will not answer the question when it is asked, whether by a regulator or in a dispute about who was competent to accept a design.

Where she saw progress

She was warmer about joint guidance produced by industry with the Building Safety Regulator, saying that working together on it was getting further and faster than the alternative, which she described as industry waiting for the regulator while the regulator maintained that it was industry's job to help itself.

The conference programme covered capability, culture and competence beyond minimum standards, the post-implementation review of the construction design and management regime, information management, fire safety competence and statutory requirements, the future of building control, and developments across the four nations. Speakers included specialists in fire safety, construction design and management, and information management, alongside officials from the regulator and central and devolved government.

Nothing said at a conference changes a contract. What it does is tell a client's advisers where the criticism is now aimed, and on this reading it is aimed at unamended standard forms and at competence evidence that cannot bear weight.