During the latter part of the 2010s, a series of high-profile residential building failures, including the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, turned the spotlight onto the deficiencies in construction regulation. It has also shone light onto the endemic level of defects in dwellings, which until now has been largely a matter of private angst for owners and occupiers. In the 2020s, jurisdictions across the world are coming to terms with how difficult a regulatory problem the achievement of safe, defects-free homes is. This is especially because “regulation” in the context of construction inevitably involves a dynamic combination of legislation, common law and industry practice. As has been diagnosed by series of expert reviews, much of the regulatory challenge is bound up in the ever-present commercial and technical tensions in the industry. These tensions are in many cases magnified by the industrialised scale of urban residential building, rendering the delivery of safe, affordable housing vulnerable to international supply chains and global financial