Disaster risk rating planned

Consultants are being called upon to help identify key threats to the UK’s built environment and establish a risk rating system for buildings.

Loughborough University has launched a project aimed at “increasing the resilience of the built environment to natural and human-induced hazards”.

The two-year project aims to create a ‘hazard mitigation protocol toolkit’ that would be used to judge, on a scale of one to five, a building’s potential to cope with risk.

The study was sparked following a series of incidents, including the Buncefield oil depot explosion in December 2005 and the Boscastle flood in August 2004.

Project member Dr Lee Bosher is encouraging QS firms to participate, particularly in their roles as cost, risk and project managers. “The project is the first risk rating of its kind for buildings in the UK and would impact on the services QS firms offer,” he said. “They could improve their disaster risk management and possibly diversify into risk management as a separate service.”

There could be significant changes needed in education, potentially changing the scope of the APC and CPD

Dr Lee Bosher, Loughborough University

The outcome of the project would provide QSs with “a framework of prioritisation of resilience issues”. Benefits for clients could include higher rental incomes and reduction of insurance premiums.

If the project succeeds, Bosher suggested that future training might be affected: “There could be significant changes needed in education, potentially changing the scope of the APC and CPD programmes.”

Project partners so far include the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Equion and Scott Wilson. High profile members of LOCOG and the ODA have also shown their support, Bosher claimed, although they are yet to officially join the project. The RICS and Sir Robert McAlpine are other potential partners.

PRE-EMPT, or Proactive Resilient Engineering & Emergency Mitigation Protocol Toolkit, is headed by Dr Andrew Dainty, a senior lecturer and a member of the Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre.