This latest regional round-up highlights activity north of the border, where three previous regions – Scotland East, Scotland North and Scotland West – have been consolidated to become the Scotland region.
The requirements around building safety have yet to be confirmed north of the border. That doesn’t stop the new Building Safety Act being widely discussed in Scotland, where many members of APS work on projects in both England and Scotland and are investigating what the new dutyholder roles, included in the new legislation, entail in practice.
“I think there’s a couple of things that are happening here in Scotland. The first is that members of APS providing the CDM 2015 principal designer role are looking to get a better understanding of what the Building Safety Act means for us in Scotland,” explains Callum Bunce.
“We are then waiting to see how that might be addressed in Scotland and whether they are going to appoint a separate dutyholder like the principal designer building regulations (PDBR), or possibly a compliance plan manager, with similar duties to that of the PDBR.”
Bunce, a principal designer (architecture) at BakerHicks, the design, engineering and project delivery company, and previous chair of the Scotland West branch of APS, is now Scotland’s APS representative along with Ken Hannah, an associate director and senior principal designer at Potter Raper.
Principal designer roles
“At BakerHicks we currently have live projects in both Scotland and England where we are the principal designer and principal designer adviser. However some of the English projects are also now assessing their project requirements to appoint a PDBR.
“We aren’t providing the PDBR service at the moment but we are investigating that with some of our designers within the business,” says Bunce.
“From there, we will understand the implications of providing a dual role or at the very least to allow us to correspond effectively with the PDBR in a collaborative manner,” he adds.
The post-election landscape and what that means for public sector spending is another area of interest – particularly for BakerHicks, which is currently working on public sector custodial projects.
These are largely dependent on continued support and funding from the government to improve the quality and increase the capacity of the current custodial premises.
More widely, the market is buoyant in Scotland, says Bunce, who moved to BakerHicks eight months ago from a similar role at Thomas & Adamson (T&A).
Following success in England, the build-to-rent market is gathering momentum in Glasgow and other cities in Scotland.
One of the higher-profile schemes is the £100m Central Quay scheme in Glasgow next to the SECC event campus. Bunce worked on this project for his previous employer.
Staffing pressures
The busy construction market is also putting pressure on staffing. For example, the architectural team at BakerHicks’ Motherwell office, where Bunce is based, has tripled in number in recent times.
He says: “Across the industry it sometimes can be difficult to get people with the right level of experience. At BakerHicks we attract highly skilled individuals and also have developed good mentoring programmes, which helps upskill people to reach and maintain the skill sets that we require.”
Bunce has been a member of APS since 2010. He qualified as an architectural technologist before developing an interest in health and safety in design and construction.
He gained a NEBOSH General Certificate in 2006, followed by membership of IOSH in 2008 and APS membership in 2010: he was elected to the APS Scotland West Committee in 2014 and became chairperson in 2019.
In his role as a regional representative, Bunce is hoping to start CPD activities for the region, which he expects to be a mixture of online teams with possibly a few in-person events as well, if there is appetite for that.
