Fellows Forum chair, Philip Baker sums up the recent meeting

The quarterly APS Fellows Forum meeting took place on Wednesday 29 April 2026. The Forum provides a space for Fellows to come together to discuss topical and more specialist matters relating to design and construction health and safety risk management.

APS Deputy CEO Sofie Hooper delivered an excellent briefing on the development and application of secondary legislation supporting the Building Safety Act, and highlighted the various policy strands where APS is actively shaping and informing policy discussions.

The group then turned to the question, “What is design?”. While the regulatory definition was viewed as broadly adequate, Fellows explored in detail the boundary between the Client’s Brief and design activity, particularly where client side decisions may place constraints on subsequent designers. This led to a more philosophical discussion on whether “design by experience” constitutes design in regulatory terms, and how this might contribute to a more robust definition of design. Watch this space — and do let us have your thoughts.

The philosophical discussion was followed by a more practical contribution, Philip Baker made a short presentation around the ISHCCO Paper the SHCC [PD] Role and Hazardous Substances Publications - ISHCCO - International Safety and Health Construction Coordinators Organization. A couple of the main takeaways were the use of the ISSA Vision Zero 7 Golden Rules Framework to drive decision making Vision Zero Homepage | Vision Zero, the use of structured framework to drive discovery and the wide variety of Hazardous Substances that might be encountered or generated.

The conversation then moved to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with discussion around APS refreshing its previous work on APS, members and the UNSDGs. This developed further into consideration of how to demonstrate social value, which is increasingly appearing in PQQ requirements.

If you would like to join a future Fellows Forum, take a look at the the website to discover how you can progress your membership to Fellow