ABOUT BUILDING CONTROL

Why Building Control?

• Variety of Projects No two days will be the same, as your projects vary between multi million pound projects, such as the Olympics and the Shard, to small residential domestic projects.
• Route to Professional Qualification. Your Borough’s route to professional qualification (RICS or ABE) will be as smooth as possible in line with other graduate schemes. You will be fully supported in your continual professional development.
• Using both Design and Communication skills Building Control will allow you to utilise your construction related skills, while allowing you to interact with Architects, Design Consultants, Site Engineers and the general public.
• A mixture of site and office work. Rather than being stuck in an office based role, Building Control will offer a challenging variety of work between office and site throughout your area.

What is Building Control?

Building Control is about ensuring high standards in construction work, protecting the health and safety of people in or about buildings, making sure that the requirements of people with disabilities are met and conserving fuel and power.

By means of meetings, design checks, plans vetting and site inspection, Building Control Officers ensure that these objectives are met. The balance between office and site involvement varies with the type and complexity of the project.

It is the Building Control Officer’s responsibility to see these issues through to satisfactory completion whether it be a residential extension, multi-storey office block or the new Wembley Stadium.

London has been subject to Building Control since the 12th Century, when the effects of continual fires in the city caused damage and disruption to the commercial well being of England. Whilst regulations were made, records show that there was no effective way of enforcing these until after the Great Fire of London when the comprehensive act for the Rebuilding the City of London was passed in 1667.

This Act provided for the appointment of statutory surveyors to see that the Act was not infringed, especially with regards to setting out the plots of land, but also to ensure that "irregular buildings may be prevented and more effectively discovered".

Within two hundred years the building legislation developed and consolidated many aspects of building practice when the new Building Act of 1844 required the statutory surveyors, now formally appointed on a regular basis, to look to their collective professional judgement in order to consider and address the implications of its provisions.