The UK government is suggesting a singular construction regulator across the industry, but has commercial realities been considered in the process? Adam Fletcher, Major Projects Commercial Manager, shares his views.
The "Competency Reset" currently circulating through the UK construction industry is, on the surface, a positive step. The objective is hard to fault: improving standards, streamlining fragmented oversight and ensuring that those responsible for our built environment are genuinely fit for the task.
But as the government moves toward a single construction regulator, we must ask a difficult question: are we building a safer industry, or simply a more documented one?
A single regulator could help by clarifying responsibilities and simplifying a fragmented system. The intent is right. However, real safety gains come from empowering technical experts, not from adding layers of administrative process. With the consultation deadline fast approaching, there is a closing window to ensure this framework does more than digitise old bureaucracy. The UK already operates under robust frameworks like CDM 2015 and BS 5975. We don't lack rules; we often lack the breathing room to apply them.
Construction risk doesn’t always fit neatly within organisational charts. The most serious hazards tend to arise at the interfaces between disciplines — particularly at critical handovers between permanent design intent and temporary works execution. These are the moments where risk intensifies rather than diminishes, precisely because responsibility changes hands while the hazard does not. This is where clear technical leadership and communication is required between engineers, designers, contractors and specialists as they understand the specific risks involved.
Temporary works and ground engineering illustrate this complexity most acutely. Excavations, shoring systems, piling operations and structural support during construction involve decisions with immediate, potentially fatal consequences. Many of these decisions are made not by lead contractors alone but in conjunction with specialist organisations whose expertise sits at the heart of managing these risks. If competence frameworks focus primarily on high-level dutyholders while overlooking the authority and capability of these specialist teams, significant risk gaps will remain.
Enforcement has its place, but enforcement alone without solid technical standards simply drives defensive behaviour and paperwork. What the industry needs most is clear, technically credible guidance on what good engineering practice looks like in complex, real-world conditions. Without that, organisations will respond by increasing documentation rather than improving the quality of engineering decisions.
There is a political urge to focus on the finished product. While post-Grenfell scrutiny is vital, we cannot allow the regulator to lean so heavily toward end-of-project compliance that it forgets the hazards of the construction phase itself.
As an example, deep excavations and temporary works are where some of the greatest risk to life exists today. An enforcement-led regulator that only appears after something goes wrong - or to check a final fire certificate - does little to help the site team struggling with a complex project under a compressed programme.
We don't just need more enforcement; we need technically credible guidance. We need a regulator that understands that real safety gains come from empowering technical experts to say "no" to a shortcut, even when the project is behind schedule.
The concern on my mind, and perhaps the most significant and underacknowledged risk driver in construction, is programme and commercial pressure. Unrealistic schedules and tight margins quietly shape decision-making across projects every day. These pressures rarely appear in formal risk registers, yet they drive the unsafe shortcuts that lead to incidents. Unless competence reforms acknowledge how commercial realities interact with safety, regulations risk improving documentation without changing what actually happens on site.
In my opinion, industry professional bodies should be formally consulted as part of this process. They provide genuine boots-on-the-ground insight into the real scenarios encountered on site: the risks, the pressures, the moments where things go wrong. They have lived it. The value of that experience cannot be overstated, and it is exactly the kind of knowledge that government policymakers, however well-intentioned, may simply not have access to.
The risk of government-led reform without that input is bureaucracy — frameworks that look robust on paper but miss the practical realities of how construction actually works. Consulting formal industry bodies is essential to getting this right.
The Competency Reset presents a genuine opportunity. But it will only deliver safer construction if it reinforces sound engineering judgement rather than regulating around it.