The Building Safety Act has delivered a culture shock to the construction industry, but clients have been slow to adapt, according to a leading consultant.
Lilly Gallafent, owner and chief operating officer at the real estate and construction consultancy Cast, said the Act was a long overdue catalyst for change in an industry that for decades “assumed everything would be fine” without demonstrating anything close to accountability.
Speaking to Building Engineering Services Association CEO David Frise on the Behind the Built Environment podcast, Gallafent said clients had started to accept their safety responsibilities could not be outsourced. However, many still lack full understanding and some of the supply chain remains poorly prepared for the level of record‑keeping and competence evidence the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) demands.
Early contractor involvement and more complete design information are now essential, pushing the industry closer to "build what you design" rather than "design what you build", according to Gallafent, but failings will be heavily exposed at the Gateway 3 completion certificate stage unless the industry shifts focus from documentation to real installation accuracy.
“In the pre‑Act world, months would go by in meetings without anyone talking about whether the building was compliant or safe,” Gallafent said. “Safety is now routinely the first agenda item at design team meetings, and clients (at least the responsible ones) finally accept that they cannot rely on assumptions, delegation, or blind trust.”
Expensive and slow
Gallafent called for clients to step up and lead the process of change, a stance reinforced by BESA’s recent research findings that many still procure on lowest price and fastest programme. She told Frise that, although some clients understood long before the legislation came into force that ‘cheap and fast’ ultimately leads to ‘expensive and slow’, others were still only now realising that their responsibilities are statutory and non‑transferable.
Some clients engaged early because their pipelines demanded immediate adaptation after the 2022 regulatory changes. Others, she said, have just started asking for their obligations to be explained, but she told Frise that the days of asking: “How do I avoid this?” are largely behind us.
She was a key contributor to the new BESA’s Client’s Guide to the Building Safety Act, which is available to download free of charge, and clearly sets out clients’ obligations and the actions they can take to meet them.
However, the Act has already had a profound impact on procurement and design, according to Gallafent who said Design & Build created a “them and us” dynamic, pushing risk to contractors and diluting design responsibility. The result was a de‑skilled design environment generating the minimum information needed to tender and hoping the contractor would just somehow “sort it out.”
Now, the requirement for detailed information at Gateway 2 is forcing meaningful early engagement with contractors and subcontractors. That alone is transforming behaviours. “We’re actually signing building contracts that contain drawings you can build from,” she said.
Cast now frequently runs two parallel sets of deliverables for clients: Traditional RIBA stages and a separate stream dedicated solely to Gateway requirements. The Act hasn’t just added new bureaucracy, it has reframed the entire design process, she told the podcast.
However, she believes there is more trouble ahead because, while Gateway 2 exposed design immaturity, Gateway 3 may reveal the industry’s chronic failure in recordkeeping. The regulator’s current 75% failure rate for Building Assessment Certificate call ins, largely due to poor records on existing stock, is a stark warning sign for projects approaching completion.
“There is a serious risk that all we do is introduce new processes that record failure,” she said.
Gallafent fears an overemphasis on the volume of documentation rather than the accuracy of installation. She warns that Gateway 3 could see well intentioned teams submitting thousands of photographs that do not actually demonstrate compliance, leaving projects stalled at the point of occupation.
Nevertheless, she believes Gateway 3 has the potential to deliver real improvements in certainty around cost and programme provided the industry can adapt. “The question is simple: Did you build what you said you were going to build at Gateway 2? That’s the test.”
Clerk of works not the answer
Calls for a return to old‑style clerk‑of‑works oversight are rising, but Gallafent argues that this approach risks perpetuating the belief that responsibility sits with someone else. One clerk of works on a £150 million project, she notes, cannot possibly see everything and their involvement can even encourage subcontractors to treat inspection as a safety net, not a shared responsibility.
Rather, true improvement must begin with the workforce, supported by principal contractor processes and informed by specialists; particularly in complex technical areas such as fire safety engineering and MEP.
With an ongoing review of the higher risk building (HRB) definition, many believe this is paving the way for the Regulator to widen its reach to take in buildings below 18 metres or to new building uses. Gallafent notes that the regulator has wisely resisted this so far. She thinks hotels could be among the first future candidates for gateway‑style controls, but the system must stabilise before expanding it any further, she argued.
Gallafent said the transition was proving very difficult but that was because the change is so fundamental, and the cultural, practical, and reputational benefits will be substantial and worth the current level of pain.
“This legislation should result in safer, higher quality buildings and more certainty for clients around programmes and costs,” she told Frise.
“The Building Safety Act is not just a legal framework. It is an opportunity to reshape the construction sector into a more collaborative, transparent and professional industry. And that starts with every client, contractor, designer and specialist stepping up,” she concluded.
You can view and listen to the whole Behind the Built Environment podcast here.
