Why competence is a gateway and occupation issue
Clients must appoint competent Principal Designers and Principal Contractors. Organisations supporting Accountable Persons need people who can manage residential building safety. Competence failures surface at Gateway 2 and Gateway 3, in BSR correspondence, and when occupied arrangements are tested under assessment.
A CV in a shared drive is not a competence system. Duty-holders need role definitions, evidence against criteria, review dates, and escalation when gaps appear.
PAS 8671, 8672 and 8673
PAS 8671 — Principal Designer (individuals)
Framework for competence of individual Principal Designers — skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours for planning, managing, and monitoring design work compliance.
PAS 8672 — Principal Contractor (individuals)
Framework for competence of individual Principal Contractors — construction-phase building-regulations compliance leadership.
PAS 8673 — Managing safety in residential buildings (AP/PAP context)
Competence requirements for managing safety in residential buildings — commonly used to structure evidence for Accountable Person / PAP support roles.
What PAS frameworks do not replace
- Statutory appointments and duty-holder accountability under the Building Safety Act
- Organisational arrangements, supervision, and quality management
- Project-specific evidence that decisions were made by competent people at the time
- Legal advice on whether a particular individual or organisation is competent for a given building
Questions clients and BSR ask
Competence evidence should answer practical questions, not decorate a tender pack:
- Who is the named Principal Designer / Principal Contractor for this project, and when was competence last reviewed?
- What evidence maps to PAS criteria — training, project history, behaviours — and who verified it?
- How are gaps escalated when someone leaves or a building’s risk profile changes?
- How does occupation inherit competence history for AP / BSM support roles (PAS 8673 context)?
Evidence in practice
Keep competence matrices linked to projects and buildings, with review cadences and named owners. Pair competence evidence with controlled documents in the golden thread and with formal handover so occupation inherits clear role history.
How Threadsovereign covers competence
Competency matrices, role evidence, and project linkages sit alongside gateway and occupied workflows. Soft product path: Principal Designer software · Accountable Person software.
Primary sources
FAQ
Cochise Derrick
Founder & Director
Cochise Derrick is the founder and director of Threadsovereign Ltd and the sole architect and developer of the Threadsovereign platform. With a background as a lead developer on central government digital services and current SC clearance, he brings the technical depth and regulatory understanding required to build compliance infrastructure that duty-holders can genuinely rely on. Threadsovereign is the result of over a year of focused development against the Building Safety Act 2022 and its statutory instruments.
Areas of focus
Implement this in Threadsovereign
Statutory workflows sit on every paid plan. Prepare and evidence in-platform; file on the official BSR portal.