RiskFlag's Golden Thread

You’ve always been able to store evidence within RiskFlag, it has been a core part of the platform since the earliest versions.

For housing clients, however, RiskFlag is no longer just a safety case platform. It is now also the single source of truth for building information management, the Golden Thread.

This fantastic new feature comes at no extra cost and is available now to all clients.

A safety case starts with a Claim for safety. For a Higher-risk Building (HRB) a simple safety Claim could be, ‘the building is safe for residents to live in’. This Claim is supported by safety Arguments and Evidence.

The safety Arguments answer why the Claim is valid. The safety Evidence is the verifiable data that supports the arguments.

Evidence is therefore essential to a safety case. In the context of HRB safety cases, you do not need to prove every individual component. Instead, the evidence must be proportionate to demonstrate that the building is safe. This is why RiskFlag historically only stored the evidence required for the safety case.

The same principle applies in legal and regulatory contexts. A barrister must convince a judge or jury beyond reasonable doubt, by using persuasive arguments. The persuasive arguments are supported by proportionate evidence, such as CCTV footage or witness statements. The same is true for a HRB safety case. It must demonstrate that all reasonable steps are being taken to manage the fire and structural risks of the building, by using safety arguments and proportionate evidence.

However, in addition to every HRB requiring a safety case, it is also a requirement of the Building Safety Act that a digital record of any information that is of interest to the building also be stored. This has been termed the Golden Thread. Some of this information will also be relevant to the safety case.

Many housing clients store evidence across SharePoint sites, legacy systems, and disconnected folders. This created duplication, reduced visibility, and made it difficult to maintain confidence in the integrity of information.

RiskFlag now solves this by providing a single, secure, and structured source of truth, the Golden Thread, in the same eco-system as your HRB safety cases. When a piece of evidence is updated in the Golden Thread and that evidence is also used in the safety case, the evidence in the safety case is automatically updated. This ensures a single source of the truth and reduces team workload.

We would be very happy to provide a demonstration showing how this works in practice for both existing and prospective RiskFlag users.