Following the tragic events of Grenfell, Dame Judith Hackitt chaired the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety.  During the review it was found that, it was common for an Architect to write a specification that would describe the performance and aesthetics desired, and so may call for example: “non-combustible decking, to approved sample, Blazeboard or similar”.  Blazeboard is not available in non-combustible specification, so the balcony specialist contractor may have proposed samples of Blazeboard which achieves the desired aesthetic appearance or a range of Aluminium decking, such as Alideck or Mydek which achieves the performance requirement.  The balcony specialist contractor would then usually provide datasheets for all of these at the time.  The Architect and employer would then choose one of these samples.  But when the specification and drawings were rarely updated to the final agreed products before being handed over to the Accountable Person at the end, and so it wasn’t always clear (in this example) what kind of non-combustible decking the balconies actually ended up with.  Furthermore, the information about the pedestals and support structure could be completely missing too.  So if future refurbishment work is needed, often expensive investigation works were needed to establish what was actually installed.  Dame Judith noted that this type of occurrence was common and so changes had to be made.  

One of the key recommendations made by Dame Judith was to establish a Golden Thread of key information needed to manage a building safely.  The Golden Thread is a single master set of information from the design intent, development and any subsequent changes and preserved and used to support ongoing management and any safety improvements needed in the future of the building.  The concept of the Golden Thread has now been put into law in the Building Safety Act 2022.  There will be some secondary legislation which provides more details about what exactly is required.  The timeline of this is not fully clear but it is expected that the secondary legislation will be released around April 2023, and by April 2024 (via the Gateway System), building projects can be stopped if it is not in place, and Accountable Persons will be accountable in the case of existing buildings. 

What does the Golden Thread actually look like?

There has been no prescriptive guidance on what this key information required for the Golden Thread entails, but there is some functional guidance and consensus that it should contain the details about what materials are used in the construction of the building façade, the combustibility performance of these materials and also the performance of the materials and systems which have fire performing functions (such as fire doors and sprinklers).  Operationally the Golden Thread will take the form of an electronic register of materials, with accompanying drawings and technical details which cross reference.  The Golden Thread needs to be created before construction work starts and it is the responsibility of whoever commissions the building to create it, and so will likely be created initially and maintained by the Architect or Developers.  At the end of construction it must be handed over and managed by the Accountable Person (or the Responsible Person on their behalf) during operation of the building.  It then falls to the Accountable Person to make sure that it is kept up to date, and available when needed.  The Golden Thread will also form part of the Building Safety Case. 

For existing buildings, the Golden Thread will be the responsibility of the Accountable Person to compile.  This could present a significant challenge for some building owners who have older buildings where the information is poor.  However, as a result of the recent EWS1 process or PAS 9980, the majority of this information should be available. Under the requirements of Regulation 38 and Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, strictly speaking this information should have been in their possession anyway, its just that many building owners simply don’t have it.  It is hoped that the renewed regime of the Golden Thread will mean that this information is compiled into a structured format that will stand the test of time.