About
How we work, and why the practice exists.
Beers Consultancy is an independent building and fire safety advisory practice, helping clients reach clear, proportionate and defensible decisions on complex building safety matters.
Why the practice exists
Complex building safety problems rarely fail in one place
They fail in the gaps between the people looking at them. A client with a difficult building is usually not short of technical information: a fire risk assessment, an external wall assessment, a structural appraisal, a fire strategy, an intrusive investigation report, a cost plan, a funding application, a solicitor's note and a stream of correspondence, each produced by somebody competent, answering the question they were asked. What the client does not have is a position.
Nobody has read the whole set together, established which documents are current and which are superseded, or tested whether the recommendations are proportionate to the risk actually evidenced, whether a fire safety recommendation creates a building fabric problem two years later, or whether the scope being priced is the scope the evidence supports.
Cost is committed against assumptions nobody has examined. A remediation scope grows because no one is willing to be the person who reduced it. A submission is refused because the evidence was present but never joined up. A dispute runs for a year on technical questions that could have been narrowed in a month. Beers exists in that gap. Not to produce another report to add to the pile, but because interpretation is the work that is missing.
Why this work matters
Why this work matters
Building safety is often discussed through reports, legislation, funding routes and technical standards. Those things matter, but they are not the whole picture. At the centre of the work are people's homes, their confidence in the building they live in, and whether they feel their concerns are being properly heard.
Nick and Jamie grew up in Battersea, South London, on a council estate. That background gives the practice a lived understanding of what it can feel like when homes are not maintained as they should be, when concerns are raised repeatedly, and when families feel that decisions about their homes are being made without clear answers or proper follow-through.
It shapes the way the practice works: listen properly, test the evidence, be clear about what is known and unknown. The test is what changes for the people living in the building. Where interim measures can safely come off, that is cost and disruption taken off residents: £3m+ of waking watch removed across c.25 buildings, on evidence, with the position before and after recorded.
Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 now requires much of this of a Principal Accountable Person, and a safety case has to evidence that the arrangements work rather than that they exist. How we advise on that evidence.
The brand line
Independent. Proportionate. Defensible.
- Independent
No contractor, installer, supplier or design delivery interest in the matter advised on. Willing to challenge your assumptions, the report you commissioned and the scope you have already decided on.
- Proportionate
Advice matched to the risk actually evidenced and the decision in front of you. Over-remediation is challenged as readily as under-scoping. Recommending more than the evidence requires is not the safe option; it is a different risk, carried by somebody else.
- Defensible
Every material position traces to a named source, or is identified as assumption, inference or professional judgement. The output is capable of being read by a client, an insurer, a funder, a lawyer and a regulator, and of surviving each of them.
The Technical Interface
Where fire safety, building fabric, regulation and commercial reality meet
We work at the technical interface. That is the point where fire safety, building fabric, structure, regulation, funding, legal position, residents and commercial reality meet, and it is where complex building safety matters actually fail. Specialists are engaged to answer their own question well. Very few people are engaged to hold the space between the answers.
Evidence discipline
Why the positions hold
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The evidence spine
Evidenced fact, assumption, inference and missing information are labelled and kept apart, and conflicts between documents are identified before a conclusion is reached rather than explained away inside one. How the record is built is set out under golden thread and evidence.
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Building fabric judgement
A fire safety recommendation made in isolation can create a different problem: sealing a ventilation path, adding a cavity barrier into an existing build-up, changing a door specification that alters airflow, enclosing a service route without considering access. We consider the effect on the building as constructed, so that an improvement in one respect does not become a liability in another.
Related pages
Where to go next
- Meet the team
The people behind the advice, coordination and site-support roles.
- Track record
Examples of the scale and type of work Beers Consultancy supports.
Need a clear position from complex building safety evidence?
Send us the reports, the issue and the decision you need to make. We will tell you whether the evidence supports the position, what remains uncertain and what a proportionate next step looks like.