Rebecca Spayne sits down with Hardy Giesler, CEO, The British Board of Agrément (BBA) to discuss certification and transformation
Please introduce yourself and give us a brief background into BBA?
By way of introduction, my 40-year career is a balance of advisory and general management roles. The advisory roles were predominantly in change management – I was part of a team that built a consultancy from 40 to 700 people. Although an economist by training, I have spent much of my career managing engineering and infrastructure companies, with board positions at London Underground Engineering at 32 years of age, Tarmac Building Products and Capita Property & Infrastructure.
I joined the BBA in 2020, aware of the impact of the Grenfell fire and the significant challenges for the construction industry in transforming itself, and felt that my experience in business transformation may be helpful.
Looking back at 2025, you describe the BBA as being in a “strong position” heading into 2026. What specific changes or milestones during 2025 do you believe will have the greatest long-term impact on product certification in housebuilding?
The BBA has invested heavily in digitisation. We have a small but important role to play in fulfilling the requirements of the Golden Thread, and digitisation is the only way to achieve this across our industry. Our colleagues have a wealth of knowledge and digital systems are the best way to not only capture content, but also to distribute it effectively. The BBA data is used across the sector. The data that we provide serves as one of the critical cornerstones in decision-making acrossthe Construction landscape. We take the role we play in that, very seriously. As always, there is a lot of work to do behind the scenes before results are noticed by our stakeholders, but 2025 feels like a turning point for us. We still have more to do, and there never will be any complacency, but it feels as of our team has embraced the benefits of digital.
Your update highlights substantial investment in digital infrastructure and data systems. How has digital transformation improved the BBA’s service delivery?
The initial focus was on having the tools and infrastructure for strong day-to-day delivery. An effective CRM, for example, as well as capacity planning, scheduling and task management were a priority to enable our teams to better serve not only the clients we work with, but each other too. Being a cautious company, we designed new systems, trialled them for a few years and have now fully integrated these improvements in the bulk of our business.
One of the ‘lessons learnt from Grenfell’ that we have incorporated into our transformation plans and business plans since 2020 is to provide not only great content but distribute the information in ways that impact decision-making across the industry. A large part of being able to do that is to ensure that our internal systems are efficient in being able to provide the platform for added value provided to the sector as a whole. We know we still have work to do, but we are incredibly proud of the digitisation and systemisation already implemented to enable better service delivery and value-add to all that we interact with.
How is data being used to support better product specification and risk management for housebuilders?
The BBA is a data business. All output – whether it be a product test, a factory audit, product assessment or otherwise – is valuable data and insight into the safety, quality and fitness-for-purpose of products and systems. The same is true for our people and process certification services.
Digitisation brings standardisation and it simplifies record keeping. Even more important, it brings significant benefit in managing risks and capturing learnings. Lessons learnt are simpler to capture and translate to other products or applications. The entire sector has become acutely aware of their role in owning or performing as a conduit of data; meaning that the need to drive and implement accurate data ownership towards a single source of truth, has become paramount. By adopting this standardisation, it helps to identify and manage risks, making accountability even clearer.
The data that we provide, currently in the form of PDF certificates, is accessed by users across the sector, for different reasons. This data is used in critical decisions made that drive safety, and quality in the built environment. Currently, all users of our product certificates are able to read entire product certificates in PDF format – not as user friendly when trying to compare, search for similar, obtain trend information, set up headline notifications etc. Our plans are to make this information available in more accessible ways. Adapting our focus on the data we provide forms the basis for many future developments; a big project, with terabytes of data to process, often requiring us to adopt alternatives ways to digitally capture content across the business.
The evolution of the CPD programme was a key theme in your reflection. How important is this programme to raising awareness and understanding of third-party certification among architects, specifiers and local authority teams?
The information we provide is highly regarded and used by many in the construction industry. Stakeholders such as architects, specifiers, local authorities, contractors, builders and many others have much to gain from our product certificates. However, the content can be rich, substantial and at times complex, thus requiring a competent reader. We wish to help users to navigate our content better and maximise the benefits. We therefore launched a CPD certification course in 2024 that has already reached more than 1,200 professionals – architects, manufacturers and insurers. Recently, a version for Local Authorities was launched, and a self-serve version is available on NBS’ platform. The CPD courses are RIBA approved.
In the context of ongoing regulatory scrutiny post-Grenfell, what role do you see BBA certification playing in raising standards?
It has been great to be part of a community that has responded to the need to improve safety and overall performance. The BBA benefits from users of our data bringing scrutiny and challenge. More and more users are understanding how certification derisks the selection of suitable products. Since 2016 – the year before Grenfell – and 2025, demand for product certification has increased by more than 300%. Clearly, the independent scrutiny of construction products is seen as adding value and raising standards.
Another benefit of our investment in digitisation has been the ability to respond positively to such increases in demand and in doing so, raising standards and reducing risks…
To read the full interview, see our latest issue here.
