Interoperability: The Missing Operating System in Building Safety Management

Where fire risk, structural risk, water hygiene, fire doors, alarms, and safety case evidence are managed as separate workstreams, the result is not risk management—it is paperwork management. Paperwork does not protect residents or assets, and it carries a significant and growing cost burden for owners and managing agents.

 The Silo Problem in Building Safety

 Despite regulatory change and increasing expectations on duty holders, much of the market continues to operate in silos, with limited interoperability between:

• Building safety management, including policies, roles and responsibilities, competence management, change control, resident engagement, and safety case evidence; and

• Active and passive life safety systems, including alarms, detection, suppression, fire doors, compartmentation, smoke control, signage, and evacuation strategies.

When these elements are not aligned, even well-intentioned changes can introduce material risk. A change that appears operationally minor, such as an update to an evacuation strategy, can have wide-ranging technical implications. A move away from a stay-put assumption, for example, may require reassessment of alarm cause-and-effect logic, audibility coverage, phased evacuation sequencing, refuge communication, signage, emergency lighting, smoke control interfaces, door hardware, and management procedures.

If these impacts are not identified, controlled, and evidenced end-to-end, the building may appear compliant on paper while the strategy and systems are no longer aligned in practice. That misalignment is where liability, regulatory exposure, and risk accumulate.

This is precisely why Ark works with clients to establish interoperable building safety models; so that change in one area does not destabilise the overall compliance position.

 What Interoperability Means in Practice

 Interoperability is not a software feature or a marketing term. It is a disciplined way of organising decisions, information, and assurance so that a building’s safety position remains coherent as circumstances change.

Ark’s approach is founded on three principles:

• A single building safety record - one agreed set of building facts, assumptions, strategic decisions, and evidence references, used consistently across management processes and technical systems.

• Controlled change management - any material change - whether design-related, operational, or organisational—triggers a structured impact assessment across relevant active and passive systems, before risk is introduced, not after.

• Standardised interfaces between disciplines - Fire strategies, fire risk assessments, system commissioning, fire door inspections, compartmentation surveys, and management procedures must have defined handover points and quality gates, ensuring that outputs align and are usable by others.

For asset owners and managing agents, this approach delivers what is increasingly expected across portfolios: transparent risk visibility, prioritised remediation planning, coordinated supplier activity, and governance that does not rely on last-minute interventions or emergency spend. Decisions are made once, validated properly, and relied upon consistently, reducing both cost and administrative burden.

As David Hills, Senior Director at Ark Workplace Risk, observes:

“If it’s interoperable, it’s less likely to be a surprise. Piecemeal discovery of systemic failures is the most costly and inefficient way of working. An interoperable approach is undoubtedly where we need to be.”

Complexity itself is not the problem. Unmanaged interfaces are.

Interoperability in Action: Three Practical Examples

1. Managing agent portfolio: preventing contradictions before board escalation

A managing agent relied on separate providers for fire risk assessments, fire alarm maintenance, and fire door inspections. The outputs conflicted. The FRA assumed levels of door performance that later inspections did not support, while alarm cause-and-effect had not been updated to reflect changes in common-area use.

Ark implemented a single building safety record and a formal change-control gate. Any significant finding relating to doors or alarm systems automatically triggered a focused review of evacuation assumptions and management actions.

Outcome: Reduced duplicated site visits, faster closure of high-risk actions, and a robust, board-ready evidence trail capable of withstanding challenge.

2. Institutional Property Investor / Owner: predictability and governance at scale

A property management group operating across multiple acquired portfolios needed consistent compliance performance. The challenge was not technical capability, but fragmentation: inconsistent templates, varying severity ratings, and no common workflow for remedial actions.

Ark established an interoperable operating model with unified data controls, consistent risk classification, quality-assurance gates, and a single reporting framework linking expenditure directly to risk reduction.

Outcome: Improved management control, clearer accountability, more predictable remediation costs, and a lower-burden compliance model that supported portfolio value rather than creating operational drag.

3. Evacuation strategy change: aligning management decisions with engineered systems

A residential building revised its evacuation plan due to changes in resident profile and operational constraints. The management decision was implemented, but the configuration of active systems did not follow.

Ark carried out an interoperability review, mapping the revised strategy against required changes to alarm zoning, audibility testing, signage, and management procedures, and integrating these into the building’s safety record.

Outcome: Avoidance of a high-consequence mismatch between strategy and system performance, reduced liability exposure, and a defensible audit trail demonstrating that management decisions were translated into engineered reality.

The Bottom Line

 Building safety is no longer an annual reporting exercise. It is an ongoing management discipline. Without interoperability, every change increases the risk of drift, between the physical building, the documented “golden thread,” and the way safety systems actually perform.

 That drift is where risk lives.

 Ark works with clients to connect the building safety ecosystem, transforming compliance from a series of isolated transactions into a coherent, defensible operating model. Interoperability is how organisations avoid being caught out—and how they manage buildings and portfolios with confidence in an environment where boards, investors, regulators, and insurers expect demonstrable control, not explanations after the fact.

 Author David J. Hills FRICS, FIIRSM, MIFireE, MSFPE, RSP
Senior Director - Regulatory, Technical & Technology Solutions