Richard Harral trained as an architect. He is a Fellow Chartered Building Engineer and is currently the Chief Executive of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE), a professional membership organisation for construction professionals utilising engineering techniques to design, assess or operate buildings. He has worked in both public and private sector practice and he has extensive experience in construction and building regulation policy. Richard worked for 10 years within the Building Regulations Division of DCLG (now MHCLG) as a policy lead and then Head of Technical Policy.

Richard has been directly involved in developing new frameworks for building safety competence as a member of the Competence Steering Group (CSG) and working groups looking at competence for Engineers, Designers and Architects and Building Control Professionals. He was technical author of BSI 8670 which sets out core criteria for behavioural and technical competence for building safety in the built environment. He is chair of CPB-1, the British Standard committee on competence standards for the Built Environment and is a member of the Building Safety Regulator’s (BSR) Industry Competence Committee (ICC).