When competence is overridden

A competent professional can identify a serious safety concern, explain its significance and recommend an appropriate response. But what happens when the organisation around them prevents that professional judgement from influencing the work?

A recent CROSS-UK report concerning the quality of construction of a higher-risk building provides a troubling illustration. The reporter describes raising concerns about construction quality and safety-critical work, only to have their advice reportedly overridden. The concerns included damaged precast elements, inadequate concrete cover with potential implications for structural fire resistance, and failures in project governance and assurance.

The individual’s competence was not necessarily the missing ingredient. The problem was that the project environment did not appear to allow that competence to operate effectively.

Competence requires authority

Much current debate focuses on defining competence, assessing individuals and demonstrating appropriate combinations of knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours. These are essential foundations. However, appointing competent people achieves little if they are denied access to information, excluded from decisions or placed under pressure to approve work they consider unsafe.

Competence must therefore be accompanied by sufficient authority and organisational support. Professionals need clearly defined responsibilities, access to other dutyholders and an effective means of recording, escalating and, where necessary, reporting unresolved safety concerns.

This is especially important where programme, cost and commercial relationships exert pressure on technical decisions. A competent professional should listen to alternative views and remain open to evidence, but should not be expected to dilute or withdraw a properly reasoned concern merely because it is inconvenient.

Culture can defeat technical controls

The CROSS report reinforces an important lesson from previous failures in the built environment: technical defects rarely exist in complete isolation from organisational conditions.

Poor workmanship may create the immediate hazard, but weak supervision, fragmented responsibility, ineffective assurance or reluctance to challenge decisions can allow that hazard to persist. Paperwork and formal appointments cannot compensate for a culture in which professional advice is treated as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.

Clients have a particularly important role. They set expectations, appoint the project team and influence how competing priorities are resolved. A positive safety culture does not mean accepting every technical concern without scrutiny. It means ensuring that concerns are examined by people with the necessary competence, evidence is properly considered and decisions are recorded transparently.

More than individual competence

The issue is particularly topical because the Government’s call for evidence on a strategy for built environment professions, trades and occupations closes on 12 August 2026. It considers competence alongside conduct, culture, accountability and responsibility across the building lifecycle.

That wider perspective is welcome. Improving competence cannot be limited to qualifications, registers or assessment frameworks. The system must also protect the exercise of competent professional judgement and provide credible routes for raising concerns when normal project governance fails.

Mandatory occurrence reporting provides one such route on higher-risk building work. Confidential reporting through CROSS provides another means of converting individual experience into shared learning. Neither, however, removes the need for organisations to respond properly when concerns are first raised.

The real test of a competent building safety system is not whether it appoints suitably qualified people. It is whether those people are heard when their advice is difficult, disruptive or commercially inconvenient.

Pyrology Insight provides commentary on contemporary fire safety topics. It is intended to stimulate professional discussion and should not be relied upon as project-specific advice.