Golden thread software: what to look for
Is golden thread software a legal requirement?
No. The Construction Leadership Council guidance published with HSE support in 2024 states that no particular format or software is prescribed for the golden thread, and the Building Safety Regulator accepts that the information may sit across more than one system. What the law prescribes is a set of standards the information has to meet. Some organisations will meet them with what they already own.
That is worth saying first, because it changes the question. You are not buying compliance. You are buying a way of meeting six standards that are written down, and the useful part of any evaluation is testing a product against them rather than against a feature list.
The six standards, in law
Regulation 7(1) of the Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023 sets out what golden thread information must be. These six are the only software requirements that exist in legislation. Everything else is a means of satisfying them.
- Electronic and transferable
- Kept in an electronic format that can be transferred to other people without the data being lost or corrupted.
- Accurate
- Correct at the time it is relied on, which in practice means a change control process rather than a periodic tidy-up.
- Intelligible
- Understandable to the people meant to read it, and any key needed to make sense of the data has to travel with the data. Naming conventions and classification schemes are part of the deliverable.
- Accessible on request
- Retrievable as soon as reasonably practicable when someone asks. This is a performance standard, not a storage standard.
- Secure
- Protected from unauthorised access, while still being disclosable to residents, other Accountable Persons and the regulator.
- Change-controlled
- Only changed through procedures that record who made the change and when.
The Construction Leadership Council restates the same duties as eight attributes: accessible, accountable, accurate, electronic, secure, transferable, understandable and up to date. Either list works. Both are describing regulation 7(1).
Why a document store is not the whole answer
Schedule 1 of the Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 lists what has to be held. Some of it is documents: certificates, plans, assessments, safety case reports. Some of it is not. It asks for a list of every fire safety measure and where each one is, a list of structural safety measures, and maintenance schedules with inspection reports.
Those are structured records about the building, not files about the building. A system that stores and retrieves documents can hold the certificate for a fire door. It cannot necessarily tell you how many fire doors the building has, where they are, which compartments they protect, when each was last inspected, and who signed off the work. That distinction is the one that decides whether a tool covers the duty or part of it.
The Act reinforces it by separating information from documents throughout section 88, and by requiring in section 88(3) that an Accountable Person obtain what they do not hold, unless doing so is not practicable. More on what each Building Safety Act duty requires in evidence .
Three questions for any demo
Most systems in this category demonstrate well. These three separate the ones built for the duty from the ones built for the folder.
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1. Show me a full export.
Section 90 makes it a criminal offence to fail to hand the golden thread to an incoming Accountable Person, punishable by up to two years. Lock-in is therefore a legal exposure, not just a commercial one. Ask for the whole thing: documents, metadata, asset registers, audit history and the links between them, in an open format, without vendor assistance. Ask what happens on the day you stop paying.
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2. Show me how you record that something does not exist.
Section 88(3) requires an Accountable Person to obtain information they do not hold, except where it is not practicable. Most existing buildings live in that clause. The evidence of compliance is a record of the gap, the search, and why it stopped, so a system that can only store documents it has cannot produce it.
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3. Show me five years of change history for one fire door.
Schedule 1 asks for a list of fire safety measures and their locations, maintenance schedules and inspection reports, not a folder of certificates. This question tests structured asset data, attributable change control and whether the audit trail survives an export, in one go.
What the regulator is refusing, and why
In July 2026 the Building Safety Regulator reported that 66 per cent of Building Assessment Certificate applications had been refused, and paused new application calls while it improves the process. The stated cause was applications that focused on process compliance rather than the effective management of safety, and that did not show adequate arrangements for the risks of fire spread and structural failure.
The pause does not pause the duties. The regulator said at the same time that legal obligations are unchanged, and that Accountable Persons should continue preparing safety case reports rather than waiting to be assessed. A safety case report is only as good as the information underneath it, which is the practical reason the golden thread is worth fixing before the assessment arrives rather than during it.
Common questions
Is golden thread software a legal requirement?
No. The Construction Leadership Council guidance states that no particular format or software is prescribed for the golden thread, and the Building Safety Regulator accepts that the information may be held across more than one system. What the law prescribes is a set of standards the information has to meet. Software is one way to meet them, and existing systems may already be sufficient.
What does the law actually require of golden thread information?
Regulation 7(1) of the Higher-Risk Buildings (Management of Safety Risks etc) (England) Regulations 2023 requires that the information is kept electronically in a form that transfers without loss or corruption, is accurate, is intelligible to its intended readers with any key needed to understand it, is accessible as soon as reasonably practicable on request, is secure from unauthorised access, and is only changed through procedures that record who changed it and when.
Is a document management system enough?
Not on its own. Schedule 1 of the Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 requires lists of fire safety measures and their locations, lists of structural safety measures, and maintenance schedules and inspection reports. Those are structured records rather than files, so a system that only stores and retrieves documents leaves part of the duty unmet.
What happens to the golden thread when the building changes hands?
Section 90 of the Building Safety Act 2022 requires the outgoing Accountable Person to give the prescribed information and documents to the incoming one, to prescribed standards and by a prescribed time, and to notify the regulator. Contravention without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence carrying up to two years of imprisonment on indictment.
Do the duties pause while Building Assessment Certificates are paused?
No. The Building Safety Regulator paused new calls for Building Assessment Certificate applications in July 2026 while it improves the process, and said at the same time that legal obligations are unchanged. Accountable Persons must continue to manage fire and structural safety, operate mandatory occurrence reporting, run resident engagement, and prepare safety case reports without waiting to be assessed.
How many Building Assessment Certificate applications are being refused?
The Building Safety Regulator reported in July 2026 that 66 per cent of applications were refused, and said the common cause was applications focused on process compliance rather than on the effective management of safety, without showing adequate arrangements for the risks of fire spread and structural failure.
Where Findable fits
Findable is an evidence layer over the documents you already hold, wherever they sit. It classifies building documentation by building and system, reports what is missing or expired against a required set, and answers questions with a citation back to the source file. It is aimed at the retrieval and gap-analysis part of the duty rather than at replacing a CAFM or a construction CDE.
If your documents already live in SharePoint, the comparison with Microsoft Copilot covers what a general-purpose assistant can and cannot answer about a building. If you want to know what a complete golden thread looks like before shortlisting anything, start there .
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