Adam Shaw, senior fire consultant, outlines a short action plan property managers can apply immediately to manage health and safety compliance across their portfolios.
In our previous property compliance article, our experts outlined some of the current UK regulations on property compliance and the costly risks involved. In this article, Adam provides practical tips and recommendations to help property and facility managers streamline compliance across their portfolios, and demonstrates how our integrated Mosaic platform supports clients to effortlessly achieve the highest standards of safety and compliance.
Action‑ready compliance matters
Compliance usually breaks down due to fragmented tools, unclear ownership, and inconsistent evidence across fire, water hygiene, asbestos electric, gas, and other building safety duties. To prevent this, a repeatable framework will help make compliance operational—part of the day-to-day. This includes regular governance, risk prioritisation, inspections, task tracking, contractor controls, and reporting that’s suited for high site volumes and limited admin time. Consolidating inspections, evidence, and actions into one auditable system supports live visibility via dashboards and key performance indicators (KPI) showing control from risk identification through to closure.
Establish governance and clear roles
Compliance gaps often appear when responsibilities are implied rather than documented, especially during role changes or cross‑department issues. Clear ownership makes accountability defensible to regulators and auditors.
- Define key owners (per site): name the responsible person, the data owner for compliance records, and a single point of contact for uploading and maintaining evidence so duties are not diluted across teams
- Clarify who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI) for key compliance activities aligning operations, contractors, and senior management on expectations
- Escalation and system enforcement: define how overdue actions, failed inspections, or missing certificates escalate to senior stakeholders
- Review governance periodically to reflect organisational change, new legislation, and portfolio growth—when roles are clear and embedded, every other compliance activity becomes easier to manage and evidence
Platforms like Mosaic—our all-in-one risk management and compliance tool—can reinforce governance by linking roles to permissions, task ownership, and reporting views.
Prioritise risk register by site
Categorise sites and assets as high/medium/low to allocate inspection frequency, budget, and resources proportionately high-risk life-safety items need faster verification and remediation. It’s important to keep it live and actionable and avoid static assessments. Review regularly, link to inspection schedules and task creation, and add enhanced oversight for the top five high-risk items across the portfolio. Integrated platforms like Mosaic help ensure risks automatically generate actions, creating a clear audit trail and defensible decisions when resources are constrained.
Maintain consistent and sufficient evidence
Inspections are only as valuable as the evidence behind them. A common audit finding is inconsistent or insufficient evidence, especially photos without context, timestamps, or traceability to specific assets. The minimum standard for inspection evidence includes: timestamped photographs, mandatory data fields with short descriptive captions, and clear identification of the inspector/contractor.
To help inspections close out promptly and reduce back‑and‑forth, a straightforward three‑field quick action checklist can be completed at the point of inspection. This ensures that, even when time on-site is limited, inspectors record the essential information needed for evidential and compliance purposes:
- Asset identification: a clear confirmation of exactly which asset was inspected
- Condition assessment: a brief, objective description of its condition
- Compliance status: clear statement confirming whether it is compliant or not
Using this approach creates an immediate, defensible record and avoids inspections progressing without the core information required for review, follow‑up, or escalation.
Tools such as Mosaic prevent incomplete submissions and create consistent evidence across sites and contractors, reducing rework, speeding close-out, and improving confidence in reported compliance. Clear standards also protect organisations during incidents or regulatory scrutiny and should be communicated to internal teams and external contractors from the outset.
Establish comprehensive contractor and remediation controls
There are several items that we consider non-negotiable in the pre-qualification stage. It’s critical to verify valid insurance, trade certifications, competency evidence, and site‑specific Risk Assessment Method Statements (RAMS)before work starts. Use permits to work (e.g., hot works and confined space) and require plant/equipment testing where applicable. When nearing close-out, it’s important that its evidence based. Property managers should prevent remediation being closed without proof by requiring completion photos, digital sign‑off, and supporting documents before tasks can be marked complete. Finally, standardise minimum acceptable evidence to remove ambiguity. Tools like Mosaic can link required documents to tasks, block close‑out until met, and enable supplier reviews based on repeat delays or quality issues.
Turn assessment actions into tasks
Mosaic turns PDF actions into live, trackable tasks so important fire, Legionella, and asbestos actions are never left buried in documents. Each action can be assigned an owner, due date, and priority, making accountability clear from the start. All supporting evidence, such as photos, certificates, and contractor confirmations, can be uploaded directly to the task, keeping everything in one place and making close-out and audits much simpler.
By loading actions from the latest assessment in one step, teams can monitor risk proactively across multiple sites and use dashboards to quickly identify overdue or high-priority items. Actions are also shown in a calendar view, allowing users to easily see when each task is due and plan with greater visibility.
Use KPIs for monthly reviews
There are two meaningful KPIs that provide a clear view of legal exposure and operational performance. These include the percentage of in-scope sites with zero overdue critical certificates, and the percentage of high-priority actions closed on time. Together, these measures show how effectively risk is being managed across the estate.
These KPIs should be reviewed monthly through a strong governance process, with clear owners assigned to each measure and agreed actions triggered when thresholds are missed. That might include immediate remediation plans or supplier performance reviews where needed. By using live dashboards such as Mosaic, teams can automate reporting, reduce manual effort, and improve data accuracy. The key next step is to agree the two KPIs and embed them into routine governance meetings.
Maintain training and competence records
Competence underpins health and safety compliance. Records should be easy to access and review, showing who is trained, for what activity, and when refreshers are due. A common failure is letting training data become outdated or disconnected from operational roles. A quick action is a one‑hour frontline refresher on inspection standards, evidence requirements, and escalation.
Digital platforms can link training to sites, roles, and tasks, providing visibility and reminders. In audits, clear records show reasonable steps; operationally, trained teams are more consistent and effective.
Your all-in-one risk management and compliance platform
There’s a lot to keep up with in the world of property compliance. But no matter the size of your site or portfolio, managing property-related risk doesn’t have to be complex.
Tetra Tech’s Mosaic platform is a cloud-based compliance and risk management solution designed to centralise and simplify property compliance workflows into one accessible system. Mosaic reduces the overhead of meeting new reporting duties and creates the searchable evidence regulators expect.
It enables property managers to monitor real-time status through bespoke dashboards and KPI reports, streamlining how you identify and manage property risk now and in the future as regulations evolve.
Delivered as a standalone solution or alongside consultancy services, Mosaic scales from single sites to large portfolios, with specialised modules covering fire safety, health and safety, asbestos, sustainability, legionella, and indoor air quality.
Learn more about Mosaic and request a short walkthrough to see how a building safety or energy performance certificate (EPC) risk pack can be generated in minutes.
About the author
Adam Shaw
Adam Shaw is a senior fire consultant in the UK.
Adam provides expert fire, health, and safety advice to clients across a variety of sectors, offering reliable and trusted expertise and supporting our team with new and exciting projects.
With more than five years of experience in the industry, Adam supports large defence contracts, high-rise residential portfolios, and various commercial projects, drawing on his experience gained serving clients such as JLR, Molson Coors, NHS, and various government organisations.
He holds a master’s degree from the School of Civil Engineering in Risk and Safety Management. Adam has completed a Level 7 in risk and safety management and is a designated intermediate fire risk assessor by the National Fire Risk Assessors Register (NFRAR) and member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers (IFSM). He is actively working to become a Chartered Member of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (CMIOSH) and completing a Level 5 Chartered Management Institute (CMI) qualification in leadership and management.