Articles

By Lovegrove & Cotton – Construction and Planning Lawyers

The International Building Quality Centre is delighted to announce that Dame Judith Hackitt has joined its Board. Dame Judith is a tremendous complement and addition to a multi-national board comprising pre-eminent international experts and luminaries from academia, various international NGOs, law reform and legal practice.

The common thread that unites the Board is a collective passion to improve building regulatory ecology in order to improve safety and efficiency for all citizens across the globe. Each of the Board Members is featured in the collage above.

The IBQC recently held its inaugural conference on the principles of good practice building regulation (a copy of which is attached) and Dame Judith gave a tremendous keynote address.

Kim Lovegrove MSE RML, Chairman of the IBQC, stated that he, along with all of the board members, was absolutely thrilled to have Dame Judith on board.

About Dame Judith Hackitt

(The following was sourced from the International Code Council)

Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer and is currently Chair of EEF, the UK manufacturers’ organisation. Dame Judith is also Chair of SEMTA the UK skills body for Engineering and Manufacturing and senior non-executive director of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult – an organisation which exists to support and encourage innovation in Advanced Manufacturing.

Dame Judith worked in the chemicals manufacturing industry for 23 years. She joined the UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA) in 1998 and became their Director General in 2002. Following that appointment, she was a senior executive for the European Chemical Industry Association (CEFIC) based in Brussels. Dame Judith served as a member of the Health and Safety Commission between 2002 and 2005 and became Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in October 2007, serving until March 2016.

Dame Judith Hackitt was made a Dame in the 2015-16 New Year Honours for services to health and safety and engineering, in particular for being a role model for young women. She had previously been awarded a CBE in 2006 for services to the chemical industries. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010 and has recently been elected as a trustee of the Academy. She is also a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and served as President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (2013-14).

Following the tragic fire which occurred at Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017, Dame Judith was asked by the UK Government to conduct an independent review into Building Regulations and Fire Safety related to high rise buildings. She began her review in July 2017 and her final report to Government was published in May 2018. In December 2018 the UK Government announced that it would implement the recommendations in the report in full.

The final report, along with the interim report, can be found on the IBQC Publications Library.