The collaboration, with a special focus on higher-risk buildings (HRBs) as defined in the Building Safety Act, was announced in a speech by CABE president Richard Smith at the Built Environment Live event in London this week.

The initiative aims to address the lack of clarity around the process of evaluating the competence of duty holders by offering extra support to CABE members in assessing, recognising and identifying development opportunities in their organisational competence.

The BSF Champion assessment – a robust self-assessment, benchmarking and independent verification scheme – provides valuable tools that assist organisations in identifying potential development areas and enables them to showcase their industry-leading commitment to advancing their leadership and culture in relation to building safety.

Several organisations have already successfully completed the assessment process, with many more working towards completion in the coming weeks and months.

In July, CABE launched a route for duty holders with general engineering responsibilities to prove their competence through the Engineering Council’s Higher-Risk Building Registration.

Following discussions between the two organisations, BSF is now formally recognising the rigorous standards this registration demonstrates and is accepting it as evidence of a duty holder’s competence in the Corroborating Elements module of the BSF Champion assessment.

This addition of the High-Risk Building Registration to the Corroborating Elements framework of the BSF Champion assessment is the first in a series of upcoming collaborations between CABE and BSF.

CABE has been a registered signatory of BSF since its inception and has recently become a corporate supporter. The two organisations will continue to work together to ensure competence standards are maintained throughout the industry.

Gavin Dunn, CEO of CABE, said: “I believe there is a mutual opportunity between our two organisations, with BSF driving the cultural and behavioural change at an organisational level and CABE focusing on the technical competency of individuals.”

Gary Townsend Vila, interim chief executive of BSF, said: “CABE were one of the first public supporters of BSF in its drive to improve the built environment industry’s leadership and culture around building safety.

“We are delighted to embark on this new strategic partnership, and the embedding of CABE’s competency standards into the BSF Champion Corroborating Elements framework is the first of many ways we will be working together in supporting organisations in their building safety journeys.”