I am a Principal Designer for Building Regulations, assessed against PAS 8671, working on higher-risk buildings in England and Wales.

Before that I spent twenty-five years building them.

I came up through construction management on some of the larger projects of the last two decades. A £768m headquarters tower at Canary Wharf, where I moved from Construction Manager to Senior Construction Manager running the interface between shell and core and fit-out. Wembley Stadium, where I personally procured the catering, hospitality and washroom packages, let the catering package at £6.9m against a £23m budget, and delivered 165 hospitality boxes. A £67m, 500,000 square foot fit-out and data facility for the Willis Group, brought in under budget on an accelerated programme. And a period at Laing O'Rourke originating public funding and executive relationships around the London Olympics opportunity.

Since 2007 I have worked client-side, running development and refurbishment for private clients across prime London and the South East. Holland Park, Belgravia, Chiswick, Luton. Full lifecycle, from appraisal through to handover.

That background is why these books read the way they do. I have been the person on site when the drawing does not match the building. I have been the person procuring the package when the specification says "or similar" and nobody can tell you what similar means. And I am now the person signing to say a design, if built, would comply.

Why I write this.

The Building Safety Act regime is the most significant change to how we design and evidence buildings in forty years, and most of the people affected by it were never told it applied to them. There is no point in the regime where anybody writes to a client and explains their duties. The regulations are free to read and almost nobody reads them.

So I read them. All of them, at source, and I write down what they actually say rather than what the guidance says they say. Where something has not been checked, I flag it and collect every flag on one page at the front. Where the published guidance departs from the regulations, I say so and give the provision.

A document that is ninety-five per cent right is worse than one that is seventy per cent right and says which thirty per cent it has not checked. The first will be relied on. The second will be checked.

What is on this page.

The Gateway Bible is the full professional manual for the regime, from the building control approval application through to the completion certificate. There are two editions, England and Wales, because the two regimes are genuinely different and one book will not do both.

Did Anybody Tell You You're the Principal Designer? is for the client rather than the professional. Plain English throughout, for somebody approaching a completion certificate who is not certain what was supposed to happen.

I also write regularly on building safety, competence and regulatory compliance. If you want to argue with me about any of it, I am on LinkedIn and I answer.

Ivan Young Principal Designer (Building Regulations), PAS 8671 London