The FPA’s Assembly Point podcast continues its second series, examining resilience, building regulations, and insurance challenges.
role of resilience
For the third episode of this second series of Assembly Point, Dr. Jim Glockling, the FPA’s Technical Director and Director of RISCAuthority is joined by Tom Roche, Senior Consultant at FM Global, and Mike Rooney, Chief Executive Officer at Resilience First, to explore resilience and whether it will ever be fully embedded if not mandated.
The panel discuss the need for resilience within the commercial and service estates to survive disaster, the role of resilience in business continuity, and whether insurance alone is resilience enough.
Building Regulations
Regulation and building regs kind of apply to physical structures, we need to look at people's ability to adapt to respond"
The recent episode begins with a look at how the UK’s Building Regulations are focused exclusively on life safety, and questions how meaningful the Building Regulations are in supporting resilience within the commercial estate.
Mike Rooney broadened the question by looking at Grenfell as an example, “there were failures… and one of them was around the responsiveness of the blue light services. So, while regulation and building regs kind of apply to physical structures, we need to look at people's ability to adapt to respond to be agile, to whatever crisis or shock to which they are attending.”
Services
Tom Roche agreed, adding, “As Mike's pointing out, if you think about services provided from that building, if you want them to be resilient, you're going to have to think a bit more about what outcomes you want from that building or those services in the event of something untoward happening.”
“And that's something that building regulations aren't designed to do. And that means business needs to do some more.”
government’s role
The discussion later turns to the government’s role in resilience, with the group talking around the need for education, and whether sufficient guidance and expertise exists if it is not mandatory.
Mike opts for a considered approach, saying, “I think we get down into a bog if we just think of legislating everything away. This is a delusion. You can't legislate things away. You have to work collectively, collaboratively, both with the government and business or sections of society if you actually want to be more resilient and recognize that.”
insurance
The topic of insurance was also raised and the question as to whether insurance alone is "resilience enough" was asked
Jim was keen to also highlight that “there is government thinking and government action. I don't see too much in our own building regulations.”
The topic of insurance was also raised and the question as to whether insurance alone is "resilience enough" was asked.
standards of competency
Tom draws on his years of experience in the field, to explore the oft-held view that buying cover is all that’s required, whereas in reality, resilience is “more of a journey,” and to maintain resilience, the work doesn’t end when cover is purchased.
The debate ended by discussing what could government do to more deeply engrain resilience principles in the protection of the commercial estate, with the panellists advocating for government to “nudge” private businesses into higher standards of competency.
