Tick-Box Compliance is Dead (and why everyone is getting it wrong)

On the other hand, door surveys dramatising hundreds of defects and declaring a building ‘non-compliant’ result in knee-jerk decisions to spend £thousands on unnecessary remediation which does little to improve resident safety. That logic is flawed.

Although fires that devastate a block of flats are low-probability, they’re high-impact and since Grenfell, we’ve got lost in the minutiae; we need to do less box-ticking and apply more common-sense.

From compliance to risk management: why the mindset matters

Surveyors and assessors often conflate compliance with some kind of legal obligation, but there are very few laws which quote a British Standard. Do older doors need to comply with BS 8214? Do travel distances always need to comply with Approved Document B? The answer is no.

Fire safety expert Colin Todd recently – and exasperatedly – explained to the UK Government’s Fire Minister: “It’s about RISK. It’s NOT about compliance”. The fact that this still needs spelling out at ministerial level is concerning. But he’s absolutely right.

Common sense in building safety really means being risk-proportionate. The law doesn’t ask for a compliance assessment. It asks for a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, and for safety measures that are reasonably practicable. It’s not about obscure standards or demanding gold-plated solutions. It’s about understanding risk and responding appropriately.

The only way to understand risk and respond appropriately is by having a system that adequately presents you with the information to understand that risk. A tick-box compliance system cannot do that.

Risk Management is about data and systems

I groan when someone asks if RiskBase is “just a compliance management system” - they want flashing red lights and dashboards to tell them what to do. An element of that is needed, but it doesn’t manage risk.

We rely on consultants and risk assessors for advice, but without a structured way to store and interpret that advice, the annual FRA which has been done by different people and different companies, now results in conflicting advice and incorrect assumptions. Property managers can’t make good decisions without trustworthy data.

Building safety systems need to offer simple ways to update information that keeps it accessible and open to scrutiny. Any surveyor, assessor or engineer should be able to contribute to, review and refine that safety picture over time. Trusted information is much easier through a history of shared and corroborated input.

And for this to work, we must stop treating assessments and surveys as commodity procurement exercises where the end product is just another PDF or certificate. The real value lies in the information captured and the expertise required to interpret and act on it.

Complexity is the new normal

Each building has differently structured information: fire strategies, compartmentation data, FRAEWs, and any number of specialist certifications (smoke control, gas safety, electrical testing, lift servicing, water hygiene, lightning protection).

This level of complexity demands a flexible system - one where each new surveyor, engineer or contractor can build on what came before. Instead of starting from scratch every time, they contribute to a growing, reliable audit trail that deepens trust and sharpens decision-making.

That’s only possible when systems understand the assets within a building rather than just as one big blob. Every flat, fire door, dry riser and smoke vent each needs to link to its own history of surveys, servicing and repairs.

Many of those assets will feature in some kind of initial procurement and be installed to a standard, will be serviced, will be checked under FSER and will need reactive maintenance. They’ll be included in the fire strategy, in ongoing surveys and in the PIB documents. Why waste time duplicating that information and risk it being wrong or inconsistent?

Trying to manage all this with generic software - or worse, with emails and spreadsheets. It isn’t just inefficient - it’s a recipe for disaster. Do it properly and the block manager’s job becomes easier, leaseholders’ service charges go down and the building is demonstrably safer.

The Digital Golden Thread is a legal obligation

Anyone who’s familiar with The Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 may not sound like your first choice for a post-work pint or G&T - but don’t let that fool you. For HRBs, maintaining a digital golden thread isn’t just best practice. It’s the law.

This responsibility falls on the Accountable Persons and not the managing agent doing the legwork. That creates a potential conflict. The agent doesn’t own the data - they’re custodians, managing it on behalf of the client.

We need a cultural reset: this is not another operational overhead for the managing agent to absorb. This is about managing building information and risk for the long term, and doing it effectively in a way that maintains an audit trail to demonstrate adherence to both the letter and spirit of the law.

It needs to be fully transferable. If the managing agent changes, the data shouldn’t disappear or get manhandled across in a zip file; it’s in the client’s best interest that they own (and pay for) this system.

No system does it all - and that’s fine

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for building safety. Nor should there be. Your accounting software won’t handle fire door surveys. Your resident portal won’t log golden thread data. What matters is that each system does its job well - and can share data with the others.

That’s why open APIs are so important. Ask vendors what systems they integrate with. Ask who’s using their API and what flows in and out. That’s how you avoid duplication - and silos.

At RiskBase, we built our tools to work alongside others, not to replace them. We’re not trying to rebuild Dwellant or Fixflo - we just want the data they manage, and vice versa. Because that’s what collaboration looks like.

We’ve read the Building Safety Act (not just the headlines). We understand the difference between ticking boxes and managing risk. And we believe building safety software should help you get better over time - not drown in conflicting reports or buried under PDFs.

We’re here to make building safety smarter, more transparent, and ultimately – more human.

Adam Sanders, Founder & Technical Director, RiskBase