President's Column July/August 2026

14/07/2025

Category: President's Column

The opening gambit – welcome from the new President

This is my first President’s column and once again I would like to offer my thanks to everyone at the BCSA and in the wider membership for the welcome I have received so far in my new role.

In this column I will continue to discuss topical issues of importance to both our membership and the wider structural steel industry. As always, if there is a subject that you feel should be discussed, please contact the BCSA and we will do our best to include it within these articles.

At the BCSA annual dinner in June I talked about some of the wider issues impacting workloads for all of our businesses and in particular, the current planning logjam at Gateway 2 due to the Building Safety Regulator. Ultimately, these problems have occurred due to inadequate resourcing, with a failure to understand the work involved in the implementation of a new regulatory system with a greater emphasis on fire safety requirements.

In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, it would be hard to argue against increased regulatory control of the design and construction process with the introduction of specific hold points, but too many projects have ended up stuck in the system as a result. Our previous President described the advantages of the early involvement of structural steel fabricators in the design process, to allow our expertise in design, fabrication and construction to benefit the project as a whole. By its nature, Gateway 2 requires a higher level of detailed design prior to construction than we have experienced in recent years. Greater involvement of our members prior to this point could result in the improved construction information that we would all like to see in the future.

Another related item is the introduction of the “Golden Thread”; the digital record of a building that should exist throughout its life-cycle. This is one area where BCSA members are already ahead of the game with our detailed knowledge of 3D modelling, BIM Certification and digital information exchange.

However, a key item going forward will be fire safety and the implications for ourselves in terms of the use of intumescent coatings. Off-site intumescent coating is becoming more and more prevalent and, in some ways, we have come to be victims of our own success with the protective coating system becoming the most expensive part of the whole fabrication process. With the current focus on fire safety, many of our members are experiencing more onerous requirements for the application of intumescents, whether just in terms of increased paint loadings or in local details such as coatbacks. The BCSA Process and Technical Committee is looking at all these issues to try and provide better guidance and this will be a subject I’ll return to in future columns.

I feel that there is a general mood of improved optimism in the market going forward, we are a resilient bunch and should be proud of our achievements. To this end the BCSA will be holding a conference on “The Future of Steel Construction” in London, in November this year, to look at the challenges and opportunities that we all face. Finally, as we approach the holiday season I would like to wish everyone a well-earned break wherever that may be.

Chris Durand,  BCSA President

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