Ensuring Safety Through Specifications

Too often what is specified at design stage doesn’t provide best practice examples. Specifications should have a much more important place and designers should gain a better understanding of materials and products from a safety point of view. ‘Ensuring safety through specification and detailing’ is a RIBA CPD part of the 2019 core CPDs.

Training can offer the opportunity for designers to learn and improve on how to deliver optimal specifications and reduce health and safety hazards from construction stage to consumer usage and further disposal of the building.

Developed and delivered by AECOM’s Paola Boffo, Architect and Specifcation Consultant, the CPD looks at safety through the lens of specification and detailing. It focuses on the principles of the Designers’ responsibilities and the importance of drawings and specifications in the delivery of a project, analysing how the safe approach used at design stage can have an impact on the building when in use.

Topics in the CPD include:

• Why safety is so important in the drawings and specifications
• The safe design process
• Why specifications are important in the safe design process
• Building after use and safe maintenance
• How BIM can assist in the delivery of safety in specifications and detailing
• The ethics of safety in detailing and specification writing
• Statutory requirements and specifications
• Trusted sources of information
• Fire safety
• Material toxicity