APM welcomes announcement of ISCG restructure to improve competence within the built environment

The Industry Competence Steering Group (ICSG) announced a comprehensive restructure to enhance competence and safety standards across the built environment. Established in response to the Grenfell Tower Fire and subsequent Hackitt Review, ICSG has now transitioned to become a formal working group of the Industry Competence Committee (ICC) under the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), signalling a strategic shift towards more rigorous industry-wide competence frameworks.

This restructure will better cover the built environment's disciplines and support existing work across the industry. The new structure includes sector-led groups, key topic groups, and working groups. They currently bring together contributions from over 60 professional and trade bodies and 1500 individuals in the built environment, with membership of the sector led groups still growing.

Gill Hancock, Head of Technical Content at the Association for Project Management, also serves as Co-chair of the ICSG where she helped lead the restructure. Gill said:

“This is one of the biggest comings together across the built environment industry in terms of looking at competence, enabling people to access competence, and demonstrate this as required by the Building Safety Act. By having coverage across the industry from construction products through to demolition and disposal, including in occupation the industry is moving away from working in siloes and instead working together for safer outcomes.

“For project professionals, this will help get everyone talking same language, and projects should become more efficient and safer. It is part of the wider culture change that moves away from focussing on getting things done as quickly and cheaply as possible, instead shifting towards getting things right first time, meeting the functional requirements and keeping people safe.”

A link to the full ISCG press release can be found here.