By Saleh Mirza, Head of Building Projects, A2Dominion.

Life is changing quickly everywhere we turn presently, and developments in our sector could leave your estate services department marginalised. We face huge challenges but are also presented with great opportunities in the post-Grenfell, post-Covid world.

What is the role of estate services teams in block management safety as we move forwards?

Safety first

Cladding: where is it; what it is made from; and how quickly does it need removing? That is the biggest issue for landlords with high-rise properties. After Grenfell, the government placed a ban on using ACM cladding, and at A2 Dominion – like elsewhere – we began an inspection programme. It was not good news.

We manage 156 buildings that are over six-storeys high, but we are not responsible for maintaining all of them. What is the inspection programme? We open up cladding and check the materials. We are looking for the makeup of any cladding, what is behind the cladding, how well it has been installed, and what fire barriers are in place. The sums involved are eye-watering.

Our average cost for remediating the cladding on a non-safe building is £32,000 per unit. Across our stock the total bill is in excess of £100m. It is not an overnight journey. Building safety is not going to be cheap. The difference between a building being safe and a risk to life is a matter of centimetres. That was an eye-opener for me.

But, of course, this work has to be done – so how you go about it is the next question.

Making the most of your staff

There is plenty of work to be done, but who are you getting to do it? The Building Safety Bill of 2020 requires a “golden thread” of building information to be created and updated throughout a building’s lifecycle. This includes mandatory reporting of fire and structural safety occurrences which could cause significant risk to life safety.

There is a requirement to engage and develop a strong partnership with residents to keep buildings safe.

For estate services teams there is a big opportunity to get involved in these areas. How are we managing risks? I do not know any other team that engages with residents more than estate services.

We have a waking watch provision – where suitably trained persons continually patrol all floors and the exterior perimeter of buildings to detect a fire, raise the alarm, and carry out the role of evacuation management – which we have built from the ground up, but there is an
open space here to think about who should be delivering that.

Do you outsource it? Who should manage it? It is not a core service. The cost of waking watch has run into £millions for us. Are you getting a good service?

We all carry out estate inspections as a matter of course, but are they fit for purpose? We can see if the grounds are a mess, but we had to outsource compliance inspections. In some instances we have outsourced them to fire safety companies.

We could train up our inhouse teams. If you are the team that manages estate inspections, can you deliver that?

The final development we are looking into is producing digital asset capture for all our tall buildings. You can walk through your estate and tag all our fire safety components; you can tag trees, bins, bin stores, and build up data around that.

It means you can carry out desktop inspections if you have the right technology. The role of estate services is ever-changing, and it may be that not all these new avenues can be taken on by existing staff and structures. But there is certainly plenty of food for thought.