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Well, if the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) – with the responsibility for ensuring the safety of buildings in England – has its way then yes, we will be embarking on a transformation of our culture.

The new powers of the BSR under the new building safety regime continue to be widely discussed. What perhaps has not been so widely examined are the statutory duties on the BSR itself to facilitate improvement in the competence of the industry and change our culture.

This month Martyn Jones examines how the BSR sees their role in changing our culture and how we as an industry should respond.

To start, what is meant by culture? It is a nebulous, imprecise concept, but is commonly defined as the way of life shared by a group of people, including their values, beliefs, customs, and ways of responding to life.

Within an organisation it’s seen as the set of values, ethics, beliefs that define its day-to-day operations and atmosphere, with “the way we do things around here” often being used to describe what it means.

Defining the culture of a construction project is even more complex given the diversity of our projects, the number of organisations making up a project team, and their often-different aims, objectives, culture, backgrounds, and ways of working.

Despite the challenges involved, the BSR aim to bring consistency, structure, and a common language and an understanding to what is meant by culture, maintaining it is “how we think, feel, and behave”, and that it is influenced by our immediate environment.

But there are wider social influences too – the economy, local and national government, and increasingly of course social media with its benefits, such as helping to raise awareness of social, environmental, political, and ethical issues. But also, its downsides such as negatively impacting on relationships, and creating a sense of detachment and isolation by reducing face-to-face interactions.

What about the BSR’s role in this? Given their roots in the HSE, they see themselves very much as setting the vision; monitoring and reviewing; supporting and facilitating; and working in partnership with the industry.

They aim to help us clarify and articulate at a high-level the factors that drive a positive building safety and compliance culture, and what this might ‘look like’. They want us to consider where we are now, and provoke discussion and reflection about what we can do to improve our culture. An obvious role here for Constructing Excellence.

They have identified the steps, as they see them, in bringing about this cultural shift, starting with awareness of the need for change, setting a vision, and showing how the core principles can be demonstrated in everyday practice.

In this they highlight the need for accountability and leadership and sharing best practice across teams, duty holders, supply chains, professions, trade bodies and with the BSR.

Then there’s ensuring appropriate practices across projects, supply chains and sectors along with competence and conduct – ensuring individuals and organisations have the skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours needed.

They are looking to people across the built environment to take the lead and be accountable in driving industry improvements by raising awareness and understanding of the culture change agenda, self-assessing cultural maturity, and monitoring competence.

Given the high level of interdependence between construction organisations, they are calling for inter-organisational collaboration and the sharing of knowledge, expertise, and data. Mutually identifying and championing success, challenging and addressing poor behaviour and practices, and striving for sustained and continuous improvement.

We’ve been here before and, let’s be honest, found cultural change on this scale to be tough given our continuing infatuation with the traditional operating system and often transactional relationships.

The last time we saw such a call for cultural transformation was in the 1990s in response to the Latham and Egan reports. And yes, these did provoke some change in our culture and behaviours but the degree of change judged to be necessary at that time has not fully materialised.

What’s different now? Well, this time round the need for transformational change has been highlighted by our past failures now all too apparent following the Grenfell Tower fire and the publication of the Hackitt Review, the Public Enquiry, and the need for a new Legal Framework.

Clearly, change is needed and is already underway with construction and property professionals having to grapple with new very specific legal duties and following more meticulous processes in the new safety regime.

But will the current call for cultural change, driven by the BSR and the new statutory duties being placed on clients, principal designers, principal contractors, and principal accountable persons be more successful than our previous attempts at such transformation? Perhaps making it work this time should be our collective New Year’s resolution for 2025.