What has the construction industry learnt from Grenfell?

Fifty-four min­utes past mid­night, 14 June 2017, Behailu Kebe­de places a 999 call to report a fire in Flat 16 on the fourth floor of Gren­fell Tow­er, a 24-storey, 67.3m block of flats in North Kens­ing­ton, sit­u­at­ed in the West Lon­don Roy­al Bor­ough of Kens­ing­ton & Chelsea.

With­in the hour, flames had reached the roof of the build­ing and spread hor­i­zon­tal­ly, esca­lat­ing into a major inci­dent that offi­cial­ly claimed the lives of 72 peo­ple, left a com­mu­ni­ty out­raged and in mourn­ing, a coun­try stunned and an indus­try in a rep­u­ta­tion­al cri­sis.

The cause of the fire is wide­ly believed to have been the wiring in Kebede’s fridge-freez­er but cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the scale of dev­as­ta­tion has extend­ed to the web of firms involved in the refur­bish­ment of the tow­er between 2012 and 2016. The refit of the coun­cil-owned block fell short of safe­ty stan­dards, prompt­ing ques­tions about the cul­ture of the con­struc­tion indus­try and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance. 

Calls for account­abil­i­ty and change, dia­logue and polit­i­cal efforts have ini­ti­at­ed devel­op­ments but there’s a sen­ti­ment that progress is slow and insuf­fi­cient. If change is still want­i­ng, what will stop a tragedy from repeat­ing?

Pre-Gren­fell, sub-stan­dard qual­i­ty and safe­ty in the con­struc­tion of build­ings were not uncom­mon.

“I was aware of sim­i­lar prob­lems with what hap­pened to Gren­fell,” says Sean Keyes, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Sut­cliffe, a con­sult­ing engi­neers and sur­vey­ors firm. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly in con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing, it takes a cat­a­stro­phe to change the way things are done.”

Phase one of the Gren­fell Tow­er Inquiry, which was cre­at­ed to exam­ine the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to and sur­round­ing the fire, brought to light var­i­ous refur­bish­ment flaws. The use of poly­eth­yl­ene-cored cladding pan­els on the tow­er walls was cit­ed as the pri­ma­ry cause of fire spread­ing so quick­ly, not­ing that using them breached build­ing reg­u­la­tions. 

Then there were sev­er­al tonnes of poly­iso­cya­nu­rate insu­la­tion (most­ly Celo­tex RS5000), com­bustible and tox­ic when it burns, used on the building’s exte­ri­or. Com­bustible insu­la­tion was used around the win­dows, yet cav­i­ty bar­ri­ers were miss­ing, which would have stopped the fire from spread­ing in the gaps between insu­la­tion and cladding pan­els as per UK build­ing reg­u­la­tions. 

Such haz­ardous mate­ri­als were used in a bid to cut costs and keep with­in a des­ig­nat­ed bud­get while pri­ori­tis­ing aes­thet­ics over fire safe­ty. Issues around fire safe­ty weren’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­sid­ered and seem­ing­ly the archi­tec­tur­al com­pa­nies, con­trac­tors and sub­con­trac­tors – Rydon, Arcon­ic, Stu­dio E, Harley Facades, CEP, etc – involved in the refur­bish­ment or its sup­ply chain – all thought safe­ty con­sid­er­a­tions were some­one else’s respon­si­bil­i­ty.

What made the inci­dent more haz­ardous was the fact that res­i­dents’ pre­vi­ous con­cerns fell on deaf ears as they lived in a fire trap with exposed gas pipes and faulty lifts.

“There’s a host of things that typ­i­cal­ly go wrong when a cat­a­stro­phe hap­pens.” Keyes says. Poor mate­ri­als, poor work­man­ship, poor super­vi­sion and dis­missal of res­i­dents’ con­cerns were part of the suite of prob­lems occur­ring in the back­ground as the pre­lude to the tragedy. Fol­low­ing the fire, a “les­son-learn­ing” exer­cise was insti­gat­ed in the form of an inde­pen­dent review led by Dame Judith Hackitt, whose final report was pub­lished on 16 May 2018.

The report into build­ing reg­u­la­tions and the fire safe­ty of high-rise build­ings, in par­tic­u­lar, sought to look into the reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem around the design, con­struc­tion and ongo­ing man­age­ment, com­pli­ance and enforce­ment. 

Hackitt damn­ing­ly stat­ed: “… there is a need for a rad­i­cal rethink of the whole sys­tem and how it works. This is most def­i­nite­ly not just a ques­tion of the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of cladding sys­tems, but of an indus­try that has not reflect­ed and learned for itself, nor looked to oth­er sec­tors.” 

As London’s Lawrence Stephens solic­i­tors out­line, there already exists the Build­ing Reg­u­la­tions, which pro­vide detailed guid­ance on the safe con­struc­tion of build­ings gen­er­al­ly. It has been crit­i­cised, how­ev­er, for being ambigu­ous and unclear, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing cladding stan­dards; it also con­sists of 1,600 pages. The Defec­tive Premis­es Act 1972 has also been key but this has now been sig­nif­i­cant­ly amend­ed by the Build­ing Safe­ty Act 2022 (BSA), which received Roy­al Assent on 28 April 2022.

The BSA also amends the Archi­tects Act 1997 and the pro­vi­sion about com­plaints made to a hous­ing ombuds­man, and it has encom­passed some of the 50 rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward by Hackitt.

It essen­tial­ly serves to pro­vide clar­i­ty around those respon­si­ble for a building’s safe­ty; key intro­duc­tions include the cre­ation of a Build­ing Safe­ty Reg­u­la­tor, Homes Ombuds­man Scheme and to pro­vide over­sight of the new sys­tem with pow­ers of enforce­ment and sanc­tions and a Gate­way sys­tem, which will see greater scruti­ny on build­ings as they progress through design and con­struc­tion.

“One of the first parts of the Build­ing Safe­ty Act that will be brought in is an exten­sion to the lim­i­ta­tion peri­od… from six years to 30 years for ret­ro­spec­tive claims,” explains Andrew Park­er, a part­ner and head of cladding at Forsters law firm, “Essen­tial­ly mean­ing that a swathe of build­ings con­struct­ed since 1992 may now be the sub­ject of new claims from res­i­dents against build­ing own­ers and devel­op­ers.” 

Extend­ed lia­bil­i­ty has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly been a source of con­tention and com­men­da­tion in the indus­try, on the one hand free­ing lease­hold­ers from respon­si­bil­i­ty for rec­ti­fy­ing dan­ger­ous cladding and oth­er safe­ty-relat­ed con­struc­tion faults, but it will have con­se­quences for con­trac­tors.

Some argue that there needs to be more clar­i­ty over the scope of def­i­n­i­tions rather than extend­ed lia­bil­i­ty, how­ev­er.

Chris Waine, direc­tor at Hive Projects, a project man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy that works in con­struc­tion, insists that the “dev­il is in the detail”.

“It feels a lit­tle bit like try­ing to hang respon­si­bil­i­ty on indi­vid­u­als. And I think there’s a place for that. But it just feels a bit polit­i­cal in the way it’s writ­ten,” he says, adding that the empha­sis should be on gen­uine­ly improv­ing the stan­dards in con­struc­tion. In prac­ti­cal terms, iden­ti­fy­ing who is specif­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble is dif­fi­cult due to the inter­de­pen­den­cies around a con­struc­tion project.

Oth­er mea­sures since Gren­fell have includ­ed the gov­ern­men­t’s Build­ing Safe­ty Fund (BSF), a deal between Michael Gove and large devel­op­ers to fix fire safe­ty risks and the Fire Safe­ty Act 2021, which sup­ple­ments the Fire Safe­ty Order (2005) and clar­i­fies who is respon­si­ble for reduc­ing fire risk on the premis­es. 

“To think that you would­n’t con­sult a fire safe­ty expert, when you’re build­ing a prop­er­ty like this – I think it’s hideous,” says Clive Hol­land, an indus­try expert and broad­cast­er for Fix Radio with 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion sec­tor. 

The ongo­ing inquiry has also exposed gen­er­al fire safe­ty in high-rise and oth­er build­ings to be poor. Data from the Fire Door Inspec­tion Scheme (FDIS) reveals that almost a third (31%) of the fire door inspec­tions failed due to improp­er instal­la­tion – mean­ing the doors were nev­er fit to per­form the life-sav­ing role of hold­ing back fire and smoke. 

Emma Dent Coad, a Labour coun­cil­lor who served as the MP for Kens­ing­ton and Chelsea when the fire broke out, notes the con­sid­er­able lob­by­ing efforts around mod­ern meth­ods of con­struc­tion, which focus on off-site con­struc­tion tech­niques such as mass pro­duc­tion and fac­to­ry assem­bly. These have been tout­ed as a solu­tion to build social hous­ing. One of these meth­ods includes tim­ber frames.

“It’s just not safe,” she says. “If you just google ‘fire in tim­ber frame build­ings’, there was one lit­er­al­ly a few weeks ago…people do not build right, they build cheap­ly,” she adds, lament­ing that the UK does not have a suf­fi­cient­ly skilled work­force, hav­ing relied on East­ern Euro­pean skills for decades with­out skilling up across the board. “We’re using semi-skilled work­ers on skilled jobs.”

Cost is unfor­tu­nate­ly still an issue that’s encour­ag­ing bad prac­tices, accord­ing to the for­mer archi­tec­ture his­to­ri­an. Fur­ther­more, the hous­ing cri­sis means build­ings are being put up quick­ly rather than built thought­ful­ly, and Brex­it has meant absorp­tive costs of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als. Add infla­tion, the end of the red-diesel rebate and a gen­uine wor­ry about the cost of deal­ing with his­tor­i­cal defects, it’s still unclear to some that bud­get and bot­tom line won’t trump a sin­cere look at plac­ing safe­ty first.

Oth­ers see Gren­fell as a wake up call for the indus­try and despite slug­gish progress – most pro­vi­sions will take 12–18 months to take effect – high insur­ance pre­mi­ums will penalise those dar­ing to use sub­stan­dard mate­ri­als, act­ing as a de fac­to enforce­ment mech­a­nism.

Hol­land says the key thing is that build­ing con­trol should be involved at the design and plan­ning stages rather than retro­fitting. “The Gren­fell Tow­er fire should nev­er, ever hap­pen again. Oth­er­wise, those lives will have been lost for absolute­ly no rea­son.”

The Gren­fell Tow­er fire cer­tain­ly gal­vanised intro­spec­tion but con­cerns remain over whether changes have only addressed those issues raised high on the polit­i­cal agen­da. There is still a mul­ti­tude of fac­tors that con­tin­ue to threat­en build­ing safe­ty in the UK, many of which boil down to cost, short­ages and house-build­ing ambi­tions that haven’t matched the slow pace of change of the reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape.