Building safety manager recruitment has become a role-definition exercise as much as a sourcing exercise. The Building Safety Act changed the language, accountability and expectations around higher-risk buildings, but a job title does not make an organisation’s arrangements effective. The search needs to identify someone who can turn duties, information and resident-facing processes into dependable day-to-day practice.
Define the building and the accountability
Before approaching candidates, describe the portfolio: building type, height and complexity, tenure, occupancy, ownership model and the stage of any remediation or registration work. Explain how the building safety manager will work with the accountable person or principal accountable person, resident engagement teams, asset managers, contractors and the regulator. A vague brief attracts policy writers when the real need may be operational control.
The Building Safety Act should be treated as the legal backdrop, not a substitute for an operating model. The employer still needs to decide who receives information, who signs off actions, how issues are escalated and how the golden thread is maintained. Recruitment should test whether a candidate can help make those decisions visible and workable.
It helps to list the duties the role will support in plain terms. For an occupied higher-risk building in England, the accountable persons must assess and manage building safety risks, and the principal accountable person must also prepare a safety case report, keep a residents’ engagement strategy, run a mandatory occurrence reporting system and keep the prescribed building information up to date. The Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023 add detail on information and record-keeping. A building safety manager usually supports some of these duties rather than owning them, so the brief should say which ones, for how many buildings, and who holds the legal responsibility.
Look for information discipline
A credible building safety manager can explain how safety information is gathered, checked, versioned and made available to the people who need it. They do not have to be the author of every document, but they must recognise a reliable record, identify a gap and ask the right owner to close it. Experience with asset information, change control, compliance data and assurance is often more revealing than a title containing building safety.
Ask candidates to describe a building where records were incomplete. What did they prioritise? How did they distinguish a missing document from an unresolved risk? How did they prevent a short-term workaround from becoming the permanent record? The answers show whether they understand the difference between document volume and usable evidence.
Test resident and stakeholder judgement
Building safety work is not only technical. Residents may be anxious, frustrated or unable to navigate a formal process. The role needs someone who can explain what is known, what is being investigated and what action will follow without making promises the organisation cannot keep. They should be comfortable working with resident panels, housing teams, legal colleagues, contractors and senior leaders.
A good interview explores a difficult conversation: a resident reports a concern, the evidence is incomplete and a programme decision is pending. The candidate should explain how they would acknowledge the concern, protect people, establish facts, record the issue and keep communication open. Look for clarity, respect and disciplined escalation.
Map the interfaces the role will depend on
A building safety manager rarely controls the people who hold the information. The fire risk assessment for the common parts still sits under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, so the role must work closely with the responsible person and with a competent fire risk assessor, and must know how findings from that assessment feed into the wider safety case. Day-to-day building condition, planned maintenance and access often sit with a facilities manager or managing agent, and fire doors, alarms, dry risers and smoke control sit with the hard services team. Our guide to hard FM recruitment covers that side of the operation.
Remediation and refurbishment bring in contractors, designers and client-side CDM arrangements. Candidates do not need to run a building project, but they should understand how construction work changes the building safety picture, and how changes reach the golden thread. Our guide to CDM dutyholder hiring explains the client-side construction role this person will often sit next to. Ask candidates to name the people they relied on in their last role and how they got information from them. Specific, practical answers are a good sign that they have actually done the job.
Separate strategic and hands-on requirements
Some employers need a senior adviser to design the framework. Others need a manager to run assurance meetings, chase actions, inspect evidence and coordinate remedial work across buildings. These are different searches. A senior profile may not want the operational detail; an excellent operational manager may need support from a specialist adviser for complex technical questions.
Write the first ninety days into the brief. It might include a portfolio baseline, a responsibilities map, an information-gap register, a resident communications rhythm and a prioritised action plan. Candidates can then respond to the actual work and the panel can assess progress measures rather than general confidence.
Recruit discreetly without hiding the facts
Building safety appointments can be sensitive where residents, lenders, boards or delivery partners are already aware of pressure. A network-only search keeps the approach controlled and protects candidates who are not actively applying. Discretion should still include an honest account of the portfolio, the reporting line, the maturity of the current arrangements and the reason the vacancy exists.
Reference checks should cover how the candidate handled challenge, incomplete information and competing priorities. Ask for evidence that they can influence accountable decision-makers, not just produce a compliance report. The strongest appointments combine calm communication with a willingness to make uncomfortable issues visible.
Build a shortlist around evidence
A useful shortlist is short, usually a handful of people, and explains the match rather than repeating that each candidate is ‘passionate about safety’. For each person, expect to see:
- The building types and portfolio size they have supported, including whether the buildings were occupied, under remediation or newly registered.
- Which accountable person duties they supported, and which stayed with others.
- How they kept building information controlled, and which systems or processes they used.
- One example of resident engagement on a safety issue, with what changed as a result.
- The level at which they made or influenced decisions, and who they reported to.
- Any gaps, such as limited remediation experience or no board exposure, stated plainly so the interview can test them.
Built this way, the shortlist lets the panel compare like with like and spend the interview on the real question: can this person make the arrangements work in these buildings? The same approach runs through our wider built-sector searches, from building safety to site manager recruitment.
VS Recruitment supports built-sector searches on a network-only, discreet basis for £450. For a building safety manager appointment, share the building profile and operating challenge through the built-sector recruitment service or contact VS Recruitment.
Sources
Sources: Building Safety Act 2022; GOV.UK: Building Safety Regulator; The Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023; The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
Three worked interview scenarios
Scenarios show how a candidate orders their actions, which matters more than whether they can recite the legislation. Read each one aloud, give the candidate a few minutes, then probe the points below. There is no single right answer, but a strong candidate separates immediate safety from paperwork, names who decides, and leaves a record behind.
Scenario one: an inherited building with patchy records
The candidate joins an organisation that is the principal accountable person for a residential block of eleven storeys. The building is registered, but the fire strategy refers to drawings nobody can find, the external wall information is a summary letter from a previous owner, and the last two fire risk assessments disagree about compartmentation in the plant room. The organisation expects the regulator to ask for the safety case report.
A strong answer starts by sorting what is known, what is assumed and what is missing, and by asking whether any gap points to a current risk that needs interim measures now. The candidate should talk about commissioning the right surveys or intrusive checks, agreeing with the accountable person which gaps come first, and recording the reasoning. Listen for the difference between producing a safety case document and actually understanding the building. A weak answer focuses on formatting the report.
Scenario two: a resident raises a concern mid-programme
During a cladding remediation programme, a resident emails to say a fire door on their landing no longer closes properly since scaffolding went up, and that they have raised it twice without a reply. The contractor says the door is outside their scope.
Good candidates deal with the safety issue first: confirming the defect, arranging a repair or interim measure and checking whether other doors are affected. They then deal with the communication failure. They should mention replying to the resident in plain language, logging the concern under the complaints or engagement process, and checking whether the issue meets the threshold for mandatory occurrence reporting. Watch for candidates who argue about contractual scope before anyone has looked at the door.
Scenario three: a proposed change to the building
The asset team wants to replace the ground-floor entrance and add a bin store against the building, using a contractor who has not worked on higher-risk buildings before. The work is planned in four weeks.
This tests whether the candidate understands change control. A strong candidate would ask how the work affects escape routes, fire spread and access for firefighters, whether it needs building control approval through the Building Safety Regulator, who updates the fire risk assessment and building information afterwards, and how residents will be told. They should treat the timetable as something to agree once the route is clear, not a fixed deadline. A weak answer treats it as a procurement question.
Interview questions that test building safety judgement
Ask for real buildings, real residents and real records. The role is judged on what the candidate kept accurate and what they explained clearly.
- Which buildings have you supported within the higher-risk building regime, and what was your part in the safety case work?
- How did you keep building information accurate and accessible when contractors, consultants or managing agents changed?
- Tell me about resident engagement you ran on a fire safety issue. What did residents ask, and what changed as a result?
- How have you handled occurrence reporting for a higher-risk building, and who decided what was reported?
- What would you need from the accountable person in your first month?
- Describe a time you told a senior leader that a building was not where they thought it was on safety. How did you put it, and what happened next?
- How do you decide whether a piece of information belongs in the golden thread, and who approves the change?
- What would your first ninety days look like across a portfolio of several higher-risk buildings at different stages?
Strong candidates talk about records, decisions and residents in the same breath. Weaker ones talk only about contractors and inspections.
Red flags in building safety manager recruitment
- Presenting “building safety manager” as a statutory title with fixed legal duties.
- Experience with contractors and surveys but none with residents.
- Vague answers about where building information was stored, who could change it and how it was checked.
- Broad claims about registrations or certifications without detail.
- Describing the safety case report as a one-off document rather than something kept up to date as the building and its risks change.
- Treating the fire risk assessment as someone else’s problem, with no account of how its findings were acted on.
- References that praise the candidate’s reports but cannot describe a single risk they got resolved.
Frequently asked questions
Is a building safety manager a legal role?
Not as a statutory title. The Building Safety Act 2022 places duties on accountable persons and the principal accountable person for higher-risk buildings. Many employers create a building safety manager role to help meet those duties, so the brief should say exactly which tasks the role carries.
What counts as a higher-risk building?
For the occupation regime in England, broadly a building at least 18 metres high or with at least seven storeys that contains at least two residential units. Check the current definitions on GOV.UK before relying on them for a particular building.
Does every building need a building safety manager?
The requirement depends on the building, the legal duties that apply and the organisation’s operating model. A recruitment brief should take legal advice where needed and then describe the practical responsibilities clearly.
What is the golden thread?
It is the information needed to understand and manage building safety across the building lifecycle. In a search, test whether candidates can maintain usable, controlled information rather than merely name the concept.
Should the candidate be a construction professional?
Construction experience can help, but housing, asset management, compliance and resident-facing experience may be equally important. The right mix depends on the portfolio and reporting structure.
How should resident engagement be assessed?
Use a scenario involving an unresolved concern and ask how the candidate would communicate, record, investigate and escalate it. Look for plain language and dependable follow-through.
How does a building safety manager relate to the fire risk assessment?
The fire risk assessment for the common parts remains a duty under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. A building safety manager usually makes sure its findings are acted on, recorded and reflected in the safety case, rather than carrying out the assessment themselves unless they are competent to do so.
What should the first ninety days include?
Typically a baseline of each building, a map of who holds which duty, a register of information gaps, a rhythm for resident communication and a prioritised action plan agreed with the accountable person. Writing these into the brief helps candidates respond to the real job.
What does the £450 search include?
It covers a network-only, discreet built-sector recruitment search, with the final scope agreed around the vacancy and decision-maker.