Project teams love Microsoft Teams. It’s fast, flexible and convenient. But when it comes to compliance with the Buildings Safety Act 2022, it’s also dangerously incomplete.
While your team chats away, vital safety information is slipping through the cracks, never archived, never versioned, never available for audit.
And that’s a serious issue when your duty as a dutyholder includes maintaining the golden thread of information.
What the golden thread demands (that Teams doesn’t deliver)
The golden thread in construction is clear: information related to the design, construction and ongoing safety of a building must be:
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Accurate
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Up to date
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Easily accessible
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Secure and tamper-proof
But Teams chats are:
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Temporary and not necessarily permanently stored
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Fragmented across personal accounts and devices
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Rarely archived correctly, if at all
Without a clear, traceable and centralised record, your Teams messages do not contribute to a legally compliant building safety case.
Chat isn’t a substitute for proper record-keeping
Consider what’s commonly shared in Teams:
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Fire safety design changes
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On-the-fly approvals
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Risk assessment comments
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Safety case clarifications
These aren’t casual conversations. They’re mission-critical communications. And under the Buildings Safety Act, failing to record them could leave your golden thread riddled with gaps, and your organisation exposed.
How to include Microsoft Teams chat in your golden thread
You don’t need to ditch Teams. But you do need to ensure it feeds into your formal information management system.
That means:
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Capturing and storing key chats and messages
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Linking Teams conversations to relevant projects, assets or safety cases
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Using email and document management tools to archive decisions in a compliant format
Only then can you ensure that what’s said in chat isn’t lost to time, or worse, litigation.
Make your golden thread audit-proof
The Building Safety Regulator doesn’t care where your safety-related conversations happened. They care whether you can produce evidence of them fast, complete and verifiable.
That’s why bridging informal tools like Teams with formal compliance systems is non-negotiable.
Want a full compliance strategy?
Download 'Golden thread construction guide: How to secure your compliance trail' our free e-book that shows how to build a defensible, end-to-end compliance trail that starts at your inbox and extends across every platform your team uses.
