The final report into the Grenfell Tower tragedy, published at the start of September, was hard hitting and made difficult reading for anyone connected with the construction industry.
The public inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said all the 72 deaths were avoidable and the tower's residents had been "badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways”.
He said some of the companies involved in refurbishing the building had displayed "dishonesty and greed" while others were simply incompetent. In response, the Prime Minister said he would use “the full power of government” to reform the industry and ensure people faced up to their responsibilities.
In his statement ahead of the report's publication, Sir Martin said that warning signs about dangerous materials used in the construction sector existed more than 30 years ago. He added that various governments and government agencies had failed to consider the risk of combustible materials being used in the walls of higher-risk buildings.
Wake-up call
One key point for our sector was the inquiry’s specific criticism of the cladding contractor, Rydon, for failing to properly manage its sub-contractors. This should be a wake-up call, if one was needed, for anyone involved in appointing and managing construction supply chains about the importance of making sure everyone involved in their projects is competent – and can prove that competence – to carry out the specific tasks for which they are appointed.
The report made 58 new proposals for the government to consider in addition to the legislation that the Building Safety Act, which came into force in 2022, has already brought to bear on the industry.
The report called for the appointment of an overarching construction regulator with responsibility for every aspect of building safety. This regulator should have a strong focus on product safety, including regulation, testing, and certification, and should be more transparent about historical testing.
The regulator would also manage the process of testing products intended for use in construction, the regulation and oversight of building control, and maintaining a publicly available library of test data and publications. All of this is an attempt to address the fragmentation of the industry, which makes reform difficult to achieve and undermines the robustness of safety testing.
Another important proposal is for a ‘licensing scheme’ for contractors appointed to deliver higher risk buildings (HRBs), to ensure only fully qualified firms and individuals can carry out this work. It also calls for a fresh approach to the review of the Building Regulations, which involves the broadest possible range of views and should lead to more direct input from our sector into the best solutions for improving building quality and safety.
The panel also felt that the definition of an HRB needed urgent attention because the current criteria, based primarily on building height, are arbitrary and open to abuse. This is a sensible suggestion because all buildings have their own safety risks, and all occupants deserve to be safe.
The inquiry was scathing of previous governments' focus on deregulation-dominated thinking, to the extent that matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed, or disregarded. It found a specific failure to prioritise fire safety at Grenfell Tower, particularly regarding those who were vulnerable.
Culture and behaviours
The inquiry panel made clear that a fundamental change in culture and behaviour is required and that everyone in the construction sector has a responsibility to ensure safety at the heart of their work.
In truth, everyone involved with building projects already knew that, and most building services professionals recognise that their individual actions have safety implications and take their responsibilities seriously. However, the inquiry’s findings clearly show that many people linked to construction still need reminding about doing the right thing.
Many young people just starting out on their careers in our industry will probably be shocked by the lack of transparency that characterised so many projects in the past – and still does today –which the report revealed.
There is much reform that still needs to happen, but, in many ways, the conclusions are quite simple and straightforward. One of the UK’s most senior building control professionals recently pointed out that the Act, which came into being as a direct consequence of the tragedy, was an opportunity for the industry to “put right the wrongs we’ve had for so many years in construction.”
Lorna Stimpson, CEO of Local Authority Building Control (LABC) in England and Wales, had a simple message for the industry: “It’s about doing the right thing, even when people aren't watching you,”.
We know a lot about why the Grenfell fire happened technically and quite a lot about the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to prevent such substandard work from being repeated, but what do we know about “behaviours”?
That word is coming up a lot, and it means that you are not competent just because you know how to design, install, commission, maintain, etc. You must be competent in your actions. Building engineers have a particular responsibility for the health and well-being of thousands of building occupants—as well as their safety—for decades into the future.
That means behaving with integrity and not just doing the right ‘technical’ thing. The new legislation, which is taking time to bed into the industry’s way of working – makes it quite clear that behaviour is also in the spotlight.
The responsible ‘no’
Being prepared to say ‘no’ is another important aspect of competence under the Act.
Iain Mcilwee, chief executive of the Finishes & Interiors Sector (FIS), discusses the concept of ‘The Responsible No’, which means being able to say, ‘Actually, I’m not competent’ or ‘I’m not insured to do that’.
He also mentions that the industry needs to drop its Bob the Builder culture of ‘Can we fix it? Yes, we can’…because sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we need to admit we’ve got it wrong and have the integrity to go back and re-design it.
This is all part of the new culture that the legislation is designed to instil and that the Grenfell Report reinforces. This needs to be a line in the sand, and from this point onwards, we should all feel empowered to speak up and call out decisions and actions that we know are wrong—even if they might not be directly linked to our part of the project.
It’s doing the right thing, even when no one is watching, that goes beyond safety to address the quality of life we are helping to provide for generations of building occupants.
The air conditioning and refrigeration industry makes a significant difference to people’s health, well-being, and productivity by ensuring, for example, that indoor spaces are cool in summer, guard against overheating, and are well ventilated to reduce airborne pollutants.
The new culture being developed in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy should give us much more opportunity to do that because it will discourage the corner-cutting that has undermined specifications for years.
After all, people spend, on average, 90% of their time indoors, so the indoor environment has by far the most significant impact on their health and well-being.
The Grenfell inquiry pinpointed many failings in the wider construction industry and in the way projects are often procured and carried out. Most importantly, it has established what should have been obvious before, that every building occupant deserves to live, work, and socialise in a safe, good-quality space.
That should become a key part of the Grenfell legacy. And who will have the responsibility (and opportunity) to create that legacy? Our industry with all its expertise and technologies and ‘behaviours’.
This is a big responsibility for all of us, but it is also a fantastic opportunity to be part of a new culture that will lead to higher-quality buildings that provide a fitting legacy for the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster.