APS has increased its sector-wide engagement to better support members in developing and maintaining professional competence. Each week, we’ll share an update from APS HQ so you can see the breadth of work being carried out for your benefit.

What’s been happening?

• APS CEO, Andrew Leslie, and DCEO, Sofie Hooper, met with our CIAT colleagues to discuss various policy areas both professional bodies are currently navigating. The forthcoming regulation of professionals, especially safety critical functions such as the Principal Designer, was high on the agenda. APS have been collaborating with CIAT, especially the last 20 months, to ensure that the standards applied to our respective Principal Designer (Building Regulations) Schemes and Registers align. We see this as an important approach for driving competence across the sector and ensuring a level playing field for those who met our competence assessment and have been included on our registers.

• CIC Governance task & finish group (3rd Meeting) – ongoing discussions around CIC member governance mapping. APS completed and returned Governance mapping questionnaire.

• APS, with our Industry Task and Finish Group (ITFG) hat on, met with various people last week in preparation for the meeting on Thursday 30 April, during which we are due to approve the cross-sector guidance that has been under development since June 2025. The ITFG guidance sets out how organisations can meet the expectations set out by the ICC’s guidance on managing competence in organisations. The latter sister document is due to be published imminently. Sofie met with the BSI to discuss the final steps towards publication and also met with a RIBA representative to address some final comments shared on the draft guidance.

• APS met with NIMA representatives to find out how we could collaborate with them across the information management piece. NIMA have embarked on a new initiative, looking at learning outcomes for information management across the sector. This initiative is of particular interest to APS as we are working to drive up competence standards overall and looking at specific ways to support our community to deliver against information management competence expectations. This is of importance especially, given what professionals in our community do when carrying out their roles, collecting, validating and sharing information of critical importance for health and safety outcomes.

• APS also met with Katherine Metcalfe, a prominent CDM and Building Regulations specialist at Pinsent Masons, to talk through all things Construction Products White Paper and the General Safety Requirement consultation, and the impact of these proposals on designers. We discussed the key pain points of the consultations, in anticipation of APS submitting a response before the deadline of Wednesday 20 May. You can read more about the consultations here.. We will also briefly discuss them during the Fellows meeting, taking place on Wednesday 29 April.

Recent updates members should know about

The ICC’s consultation on draft principles for informed clients’ closes next week Tuesday 5 May. This draft guidance marks an important step in strengthening competence and accountability across the built environment, setting out what is expected from clients. APS will be discussing this consultation at our Fellow’s Forum on Wednesday, before submitting our response by the deadline. Find out more here.

What’s coming up this week? (27 April -3 May)

Meetings APS is involved in this week include:

• APS, CABE and CIAT meeting to discuss the PDBR

• APS Fellows Forum

• APS Chairing Industry Task and Finish Group - approval of guidance document on how to manage competence

• CIC Professional Competence Task & Finish - working group

• CIC Digital Forum

We’ll continue to keep members updated on key developments and engagement across the industry as plans for 2026 take shape.

If you would like to contribute or share expertise on issues that matter to you, please contact APS HQ at info@aps.org.uk.