Grenfell seven years on: learning from disaster

Grenfell still casts a long shadow over the industry. To the dismay of the families of those who died in the tragic fire in June 2017 the process of criminal prosecutions has yet to begin. But in that time the deficient practices of the sector have been laid bare in the two Grenfell inquiries and there has been a plethora of changes in the legislative landscape to improve safety and accountability and responsibility. 

These include – though are by no means all – a ban on combustible materials in external walls of new high-rise residential buildings over 18m, as well as hospitals, care homes and student accommodation. And we saw the biggest swathe of changes of all ushered in with the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA). 

The BSA created the Building Safety Regulator within the HSE to oversee the safe design and management of buildings, particularly high-rise residential buildings. It introduced the role of the accountable person, and other new dutyholders – including a new principal designer (PD) and principal contractor (PC). 

We’ve also seen a shake-up in building control and new gateway processes for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) and there has been a new emphasis placed on the  ‘golden thread’ of information – ensuring that accurate, up-to-date information about the design, construction and ongoing management of buildings is maintained and accessible throughout the building’s life cycle to ensure safety and accountability.

But there could be more changes to come. The Grenfell Phase 2 Report, published in September, set out 58 additional recommendations for change on top of those that 
have already been put in place. The government pledged to respond within six months.

The report concluded that the deaths were avoidable, and criticised multiple entities and individuals connected with the tower’s management and refurbishment. The catalogue of poor decisions and errors ranged from incompetence to dishonesty and illegality. 

Recommendations included:

But what do APS members think? Here four of them reflect on how the industry has changed, what’s working for the better and what are the things that still need to be addressed.

We’ve seen heightened awareness of design decisions related to higher-risk buildings. At Waterman, we are complying with the legislation as designers, however the structural engineering role is evolving seeing us increasingly acting as principal designer (PD) for the building regulations. 

The challenge is evidencing compliance, particularly around behaviours. Being a multidisciplinary consultancy certainly gives us an advantage when acting as PD for the building regulations since we have all the necessary skill, knowledge, experience and behaviours (SKEB) in-house to draw upon. 

Putting aside the insurance issues, from my experience the industry is struggling to get to grips with the complexity and sheer volume of legislative changes, related secondary legislation and amendments to existing legislation. 

The main issue is that legislation is not supported by an Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) or, as with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, a guidance document. 

There is inevitable ambiguity and sometimes conflicting information within the legislative framework. It would help drive compliance, and ultimately building safety, had the legal guidance documents been in place to help industry across the board. 

Ultimately, when the industry is left to develop its own response, we see a huge variation in what would be considered good practice. For example, we recently received a competency questionnaire which was virtually a copy of BS 8670 around individual ethical behaviours of our designers. 

As professionals we sign up to ethical principles as part of our membership to professional standards bodies, so one might argue we will simply be regurgitating our existing commitments to act in a moral and safe manner. But this does not necessarily seem to prevent the type of purposeful misleading behaviour as we’ve seen from the Grenfell Phase 2 report.

I would question why the Code for Construction Product Safety is voluntary. In my opinion, the code should be mandatory but phased in to allow manufacturers and other members to work with the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS). 

Of the 280,000 manufacturers, approximately 60 have engaged with the OPSS, and it’s not surprising that these are larger manufacturers and tier 1 contractors. 

It should be possible for architects, specifiers and principal designers to know that products specified, purchased and finally installed on buildings can be relied upon to perform in a safe manner and whether or not a product or system is suitable for its intended use. 

We need products which do the job we are led to believe they do, and they must be marketed honestly and transparently. Any conformity assessment bodies must be adequately resourced, independent and impartial. Considering all this, I don’t believe a voluntary code will be robust enough to drive the change we need with the impetus required.    

Lowest price tendering tends to lead to poorer materials being selected on the basis of cost and can ultimately lead to the erosion of both quality and safety. Many are questioning whether value engineering (VE) is essentially poor practice, since VE can influence decisions leading to cheaper but less safe material selections outside of the specification. Ultimately, this is often reversed when a PD challenges the decisions, which has led to many heated debates around selection of materials. 

Speaking to architects, specifiers and purchasers, they are still in a position where they are trusting manufacturers to be open and honest about their products, relying on product literature and testing regimes to demonstrate this. 

The most important message from me is that we want to hear more from the OPSS and see a register of products that are safe to use. 

The big thing is a change in behaviour. More and more contractors and consultants are having those difficult conversations with clients.

They are not just accepting work; they are reviewing things internally and, where necessary, raising their hands and saying, “We’re not competent to do this” or “We haven’t got the right resource at this time”. That’s a really positive change!

What and when clients pay for services is also changing. They’re having more upfront conversations around programme, resources and procurement strategies. 

The new change control process for HRBs forces us to question why we’re changing the design or product. Those who want to make the change – for example, there might be supply chain issues – must justify it, and again that is a good thing.

We are also seeing these principles around procurement and change control being applied to non-HRB work as well.

One of the big challenges I see for PCs is change control. They now need to foster a culture that sees builders stopping work if they cannot physically build what is on the drawings in front of them and send it back to designers. 

That involves a real change in culture because generally there is a lot of problem-solving that happens at site level. 

But it’s still early days on that, because – the last bit of data showed that – there have only been 147 HRB applications that have been approved to date. It is important that people keep sharing their experiences.

There is also a big question around what level of design detail is needed when submitting a Gateway 2 application. We need a bit more of a steer on that one. It would really help if the Regulator put out an exemplar, so we know what best practice looks like. 

Also, we don’t have currently have any certification schemes in place for proving organisational capability for the dutyholder roles under the building regulations. The work done by the Building Safety Alliance so far is an important step.

There is also a challenge emerging for PCs with design and build. Architects are struggling find insurance for the PD role under these types of contracts, which will likely see it fall to the PC to take up.

There are clearly lots of challenges and changes to get to grips with but think the industry will develop it its own standardised response to the legislation, which is what we have done under the CDM Regulations.

The recommendations in the inquiry all seek to build upon the improvements already written into legislation. I feel that we should see how the industry responds over the next year or so before we explore further measures.

Since Grenfell our industry has been under intense scrutiny, and building safety has become a top focus in designing and constructing our estates.

The sheer amount of legislation (new and amended) that we’re required to consult does mean you have to be really determined to be able to find and interpret it all!

I’m sure the new scrutiny of the gateway process will lead to better and safer buildings and will certainly lead to a more comprehensive design being produced before the first spade hits the ground, which can only be a positive thing.

There is still a lot of uncertainty within the industry, which often is a result of the limited time to fully digest the implications of the secondary legislation. There is much confusion across a number of areas from what should be in a competent declaration to what are the practical deliverables, that should be expected from the new PD and PC roles. 

It’s probably worth pointing out that a compliant design will always fall down if the building work is not carried out correctly. Also, in my opinion, there has been lots of focus on the building regulations PD in terms of developing scopes of services but not so much on the building regulations PC. 

I’m positive the mist will start to clear in time as all parties start to understand the new requirements of the BSA and in particular the amended building regulations requirements and new duty holders better. However, additional, and more accessible, guidance would be useful and templates of the prescribed documents.

The report for me highlighted that as an industry we need to change the mindset and culture, so that within every meeting the resident’s safety is at the forefront. There is still a long way to go on this.

It also recommends major reforms in fire safety regulations, accountability for building owners and managers, improvements in building design and materials, clearer evacuation strategies and stronger oversight of emergency services to prevent a repeat of the disaster.

The BSA has addressed many of the regulatory deficiencies which led to the tragedy, however many are still outstanding. For me, some of the key ones are the mandatory enhanced competency requirements for fire risk assessors, more focus on vulnerable residents and better clarity on elements of Approved Document B.

The recommendations from the report are vast but I would like to see the swift progress of the fire safety management in HRBs such as all high-rise residential building owners with any known deficiencies to evaluate their ‘stay put strategy’ fire strategies, fire engineers to become a protected and regulated profession and mandatory accreditation to certify the competence of fire risk assessors. 

The report highlights competence, which has been addressed by the changes within the building regulations, but the industry must step up to meet these new standards. Some recommendations I would apply caution to include changing the definition of an HRB and the licensing scheme for PCs to work on HRBs, as this could make things even more difficult.

Initially there was disbelief amongst a number of our project partners and within our organisation about the extent and breadth of the building safety legislation, assuming it would be just for higher-risk buildings.  

But we have been fortunate to have members of the Building Safety Alliance via Safety Mark Services and Building Safe – facilitating our briefings and training sessions providing good CPD for internal and external project team members. 

We have thereby been ramping up in our understanding of what is required for new and the refurbishment of all our UCL buildings – HRBs and non-HRBs and the on-going management for new and existing buildings in occupation and during maintenance activities. 

Before the legislation came out, many in our project teams were sceptical about some of the measures like how the new PD role would work practically; some consultants had worries about getting insurance cover for that role and the shake-up of building control. 

There were lots of noises predicting projects would grind to a halt. But it is settling down now and, although there are some firms who carry out the PD CDM role but do not want to take on the PD role under the building regulations, we are really encouraged by those embracing the new duties.

We are really encouraged with the way some are seeking to demonstrate the new duties. We are finding building surveyors and other lead designers who understand the building regulations taking on the role.

What is not working is the level of assurance, getting the evidence of design assurance and construction assurance that the design meets the legislation and the building regs.

PDs who are not necessarily designers have been reluctant to do this because they say they do not have the competence to do so. But we have been saying that it’s your responsibility to make sure that the person that is carrying out that design is competent, and that they sign as and provide the evidence that they are competent. 

In UCL, we already have a Building Safety Portal that centrally directs all who need golden thread/key building Information. We are also progressing with a BSA tool which captures the design and construction assurance for all non-HRBs using and capturing information through the design phase and the construction phase. 

We’re applying the ‘golden thread’ process to all our projects, not just higher-rise student accommodation, because we think it is the right thing to do. The recently published guidance from the Construction Leadership Council accords with 
that philosophy.

I think all of the recommendations set out in the Phase 2 Inquiry must be carefully looked at. But of all the recommendations I’d be keen to see the creation and maintenance of a public record of recommendations and steps taken in response to feedback from public inquiries, coroners and select committees.

I don’t think we learn enough from the disasters of the past. This time we really have to and I think that would help.