For years, the construction industry answered one question well: is the product compliant? CE marks, UKCA marks, test certificates. Grenfell exposed the question nobody was answering: are the people competent? Products don't fail on their own — buildings fail when people misunderstand, wrongly specify, substitute or misuse products. BS 8670-2 exists to close that gap.
What is BS 8670-2?
After the Grenfell Tower fire, Dame Judith Hackitt's independent review found the industry's approach to competence was fragmented and inconsistent — especially across supply chains. The Building Safety Act 2022 followed, putting a duty of competence on everyone who works on buildings, with penalties that include unlimited fines and prison time. The British Standards Institution was then tasked with turning that duty into a practical national framework: the BS 8670 series.
Part 1 (published 2024) covers who is competent to do the work. Part 2 — expected in February 2027 — covers who is competent to make, specify, sell, install and talk about the products. Its public consultation closed in July 2026, so the shape of the final standard is already clear. And it applies across all four UK nations, to all buildings — not just high-risk ones.
"We could lose contracts if we can't provide assurances… tier-one customers want assurance that we manage competency effectively before they'll place an order." Competence management lead, UK fire-protection manufacturer
That quote is the real story. The standard is technically voluntary — but the tier-one contractors who own the projects and the Gateway declarations are already auditing their supply chain's competence management before they place orders. Lose the assurance, lose the contract.
The five levels, A to E
The heart of the standard is a five-level competence scale. Every person who touches construction products or product information sits somewhere on it — and, just as importantly, each level defines what a person must not do.
Approves product decisions, substitutions and expanded uses — and writes the organisation's own product rules.
Develops product information for new or unusual uses; approves selections within a product's proven use.
Selects products within their proven, documented use and can interpret and explain product information.
Can propose products and explain how they work — but must not make selections or give product advice.
Works under supervision and passes product information on word-for-word, without interpretation.
Two details catch most firms out. First, levels attach to functions, not job titles — a site manager might be Level D for installation but Level E for specification, and seniority is explicitly not competence. Second, the standard's own worked examples put a manufacturer's marketing team at Level E: they can publish product information, but only with named technical sign-off. Yes — even marketing is in scope.
The concept everyone will get wrong: scope of application
The whole level system pivots on one distinction, and it's worth thirty seconds to understand it properly.
Demonstrated scope
The product is used exactly as it was tested and documented — e.g. a ventilation fan doing ventilation.
Level C can selectExpanded scope
Any new use — that same fan repurposed for smoke control. Substitution counts as a design decision.
Level B develops · A approvesSwapping one firestopping product for a "cheaper equivalent" is no longer a procurement shortcut — under BS 8670-2 it is a design responsibility that only specific levels can carry. If your organisation can't show who is allowed to make that call, an auditor will notice.
The question a spreadsheet can't answer
When a tier-one contractor's auditor — or, one day, an investigator — arrives, they don't ask whether you have training records. They ask a point-in-time question:
The spreadsheet
The golden thread
Who needs to act — and when
Tier-one customers audit competence before ordering; CCPI accreditation expects it; marketing claims need sign-off.
Prove every installer worked within scope, under recorded supervision, on any date asked.
Selection and substitution now carry formal design responsibility, evidenced per specialism.
Dutyholders must demonstrate a competent workforce — and that nobody works beyond it.
High-risk roles flagged, named experts to escalate to, and CPD hours assured.
Counter staff relay product information daily — the rules on not giving advice apply directly.
The timing matters: publication is expected in February 2027, and the firms that can show evidence today are the ones getting specified. That's roughly seven months to move from spreadsheets to a system — comfortable if you start now, a scramble if you wait for the standard to print.
One auditable system for BS 8670-2 competence
Most 50–1,000-person construction and fire businesses have nobody whose full-time job is competence management. StaffCircle runs the framework for you — in the same language as the Building Safety Regulator.
AI Competency Framework
SKEB profiles — skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours — generated per role across the five A–E levels, aligned to the standard's own criteria, in minutes rather than months.
Explore the AI Competency Framework →Skills Assessments & validation reviews
Validate and revalidate competence through evidence-backed reviews with named sign-off — building the point-in-time golden thread automatically as you go.
See Performance & Reviews →Employee Development
When a validation exposes a gap, development plans close it — so competence levels rise instead of just being recorded, and career paths stay visible.
Explore Employee Development →Training Compliance & CPD
Expiry alerts, revalidation schedules and CPD tracking for high-risk roles — including the 10-hour expectation — assured automatically, with named subject-matter experts to escalate to.
See Training Compliance →AI Assist — the AI your IT team will approve
Ask "what percentage of post-holders for Approved Document B are competent right now?" and get the answer from your own data. Runs inside Azure UK, tenant-locked, ISO 42001-certified.
Meet AI Assist →Built for construction & fire
The dedicated solution for safety-critical supply chains — audit-grade evidence in minutes for tier-one assurance requests, tenders and Gateway submissions.
Visit the Construction solution →How ready are you? Find out in ten questions.
Our BS 8670-2 Readiness Checklist walks you through the ten things auditors and tier-one contractors will look for — with a plain-English overview up front and clause-by-clause detail behind it. Score yourself in ten minutes.
The bottom line: BS 8670-2 doesn't ask for anything exotic — it asks you to know who can do what with construction products, to prove it with evidence, and to retrieve that proof on any date someone asks. That's precisely what StaffCircle's competence management platform was built to do. The firms that get this right won't just pass audits — they'll win the work.