Workstream 10: Competence/ethics/advocacy

Levels of professional expertise and competence will become central to institutions’ activities with the core objective of enabling and delivering safe buildings, net-zero emissions & bio-diverse environments. Codes of ethics, practice and conduct will follow suite as will professional disciplinary systems and monitoring of skills.

Led by the Edge, this workstream includes measurable deliverables divided into three priority groupings: short-term, medium term and long term.

The Professional Institutions, like the country, are grappling with multiple issues across many fronts, but none is more important than the rapidly developing environmental emergency. Taking the actions required is taking its time to come into focus, but by working together achieving the necessary change at pace is possible. The Institutions have the capacity to act and to cope, but only if they grasp the importance of action now.

Defined levels of professional expertise and competence are central to institutions’ activities with the core objective of enabling and delivering safe buildings, net-zero emissions & bio-diverse environments.

Codes of ethics, practice and conduct are also needed to face the challenge of climate change as are professional disciplinary systems and monitoring of skills. This workstream includes measurable deliverables divided into three priority groupings: short-term, medium term to be and long term.

What have participants achieved so far?

The workstream takes a twin track approach to its central themes of competence, ethics and advocacy. It is continuing its necessary task of sharing best practice around these themes and ensuring that the signatories to the Plan work together on issues such as advocacy and delivering beneficial policy change. The workstream group has itself become an inter-institutional policy forum for institutional policy advocacy.

Some highlights reported by Workstream members have included:

• RIBA has launched its Ethical Practice Guide. This guide is designed to improve industry's grasp of ethical decision-making as it relates to the wider world, society, clients, the workplace, the profession, and the individual. The authors presented on the Guide to an audience of PIs at a CIC Climate Change Committee meeting. is something with great relevance across the PIs and complements other core publications such as the RIBA Climate Guide.

• IStructE is running higher-level competency checks on new members and on CPD compliance. Members have been expelled for non-compliance.

• RIBA is moving towards mandatory CPD, with testing, on climate literacy as part of its Way Ahead Framework

• InstRE has made dealing with climate change an obligatory part of its training requirements

• The Engineering Council and Royal Academy of Engineering have jointly published ‘Engineering Ethics: Maintaining society's trust in the Engineering Profession’. This supports their 2017 joint ‘Statement of Ethical Principles’

• The RIBA has launched its separate mandatory CPD stream on ethics and ethical decision-making. Trialling knowledge tests for compliance will begin shortly.

• The RICS is proposing amending its Royal Charter to stress it and its members commitment to the “highest ethical and technical standards”

Next steps

One of the deliverables is an underlying framework for competence for sustainability in the built and natural environment. It is proposed to model this framework (or really a framework for frameworks) on the equivalent one developed for building safety, BSI Flex 8670, ensuring the two align and cohere. The purpose of the framework is to provide a consistent and common platform for all work on sustainability in our industry, including professionals, tradespersons, product manufacturers, regulators and educators. Essentially anyone who operates within a system of standards, i.e. practically everyone.

As with 8670 it is intended to develop the framework as a BSI Flex and a scope for this, developed after consultation with a wide range of professional organisations, government departments and industry bodies, has been agreed with the BSI. Fundraising for supporting an open source version of the Flex is underway and it is hoped that the Flex will be available by the end of 2024.

On advocacy, discussions are proposed on the formation of an inter-institutional policy forum for institutional policy advocacy

Resource Library

• Built for the Environment report

This global report, produced by RIBA in partnership with Architects Declare, makes the case that the built environment must drastically reduce its carbon emissions to work towards net zero.

https://www.architecture.com/k...

• The Big Issues Webinar Series

Following on from the conference programme at Futurebuild 2022, the Edge has curated a series of sessions highlighting some of the big issues that we are all probably aware of, but tend to put to one side as too difficult to resolve. These sessions interrogate these issues in the light of proposing solutions.

https://edgedebate.com/

• RIBA Ethical Practice Guide

This guide is designed to improve industry's grasp of ethical decision-making as it relates to the wider world, society, clients, the workplace, the profession, and the individual. By making ethical practice one of its mandatory competences, the RIBA has made it a requirement that students and professionals develop a fundamental level of awareness and understanding of ethics.

https://www.ribabooks.com/riba-ethical-practice-guide_9781914124723#

• The Climate Framework

The Climate Framework is an excellent resource which will help build a common language, a holistic knowledge and skills base around climate change and boost collaborate across the global built environment sector and academia to collectively build capacity for accelerated climate action. Underpinned by the vision and the mission of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, the Climate Framework presents a common curriculum structure organised around six overarching themes.

https://www.climateframework.com/