Dr Jonathan Evans is the CEO for Ash & Lacy, a leading UK-based supplier of components and systems for the Architectural market. We discuss with Jonathan about the measures for UK Building market, after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which costed the lives of 72 people in a several fire on 14th June 2017. Dr Jonathan, earlier this month, was the 7th sad anniversary of Grenfell Tower tragedy Indeed. There will be many heartfelt tributes and it was another very painful day for the survivors and bereaved who wait patiently for justice and truth. However, I’ve come to feel that it is actually more significant in terms of the need for change and professional responsibility because, seven years ago, was the last day we went about our lives oblivious to the mistakes that had been made many years before and the dangers that had been created. Neglections, misinterpretations and misjudgements, that horrifically ended the lives of 72 innocent people who put their trust in our industry, and endangered many others including those who bravely attended the fire. Many, many more will be burdened with mental and physical consequences for the rest of their lives. Unlike what we’re unhelpfully led to believe, the construction industry does not have a monopoly on unscrupulous behaviour and bad culture, but the next time you read or make a claim about fire performance or how ‘tolerable’ a risk may be, please remember the images in this video. Apart from the collective responsibility, there is also the personal one. Each one of us is a part of the Construction Industry after all and our own actions do matter. The night of the Grenfell Fire in 2017, I flew back from holiday and went straight to the office to look through our records. One by one I called the installers relating to any project where it looked like we might have supplied polyethylene-cored ACM on a tall building. All we usually had to go on was the quantity ordered or a panel schedule. I’ve never known people call me back so quickly. The last of the buildings we identified was reclad by the end of 2018. One was even reclad in the Summer of 2017. Ironically, they all missed out on government funding by acting so swiftly. One of my criticisms of the DCLG post-Grenfell process was that despite my encouragement, nobody wanted to ask the suppliers where all the buildings were. Instead, governments relied on building owners to send samples of their cladding to labs for testing. The further you go back, the poorer records will be, but with sufficient perseverance, you can get a fair idea where all these dangerous buildings are and those who know best are the people that fabricated and supplied the stuff in the first place. In the UK, after over 7 years, 430 out of 496 known ACM buildings over 18m have now been reclad but 16 still haven’t begun their remediation. (There are thousands of blocks between 11-18m considered unsafe that haven’t begun remediation.) The EU needs a structured plan to urgently rectify such buildings too (and lower) but apparently hasn’t even begun looking for them. Competency and knowledge is useless without the leadership and conviction to do something with it. It cannot be a UK issue, right? There should be buildings with flammable materials all over Europe. Definitely. In January 2024 for example, a fire destroyed a warehouse in St. Petersburg belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. Fire spread to an area of 50,000 square meters (about 538,200 sqft). https://lnkd.in/e2uHRJn9 There have been numerous high profile fires like this in warehouses such as Ocado, Amazon etc but the first image below struck me as relevant to the interpretation of our Building Regulations. After the car park fire at Luton airport and numerous school fires, there are renewed calls for mandatory sprinklers in such buildings here. The arguments to change BB100 etc are often focused on avoidable serious disruption to our children’s education etc. and consequences such as business interruption, property loss etc are often cited as things we need to regulate against. However, and I’ll repeat that no matter how convincing, these arguments are defeated by Regulation 8 in Part 2 of the Building Regulations. More specifically, it is how this Regulation is interpreted that’s the problem. Whether it’s in business, personal life or an incident inquiry, if you can’t find the root cause of a problem it will more than likely reoccur. Dame Judith Hackitt has reviewed the regulatory ‘system’, not the Regulations themselves. To be fair, that’s precisely what she was asked to do in true civil service style – “Always dispose of the difficulty in the title. It does less harm there than in the text” (Sir Humphrey Appleby, “Open Government”). I’m usually told that this primary legislation is beyond challenge – too difficult. Not the kind of thing an entrepreneur usually accepts, but pragmatically, maybe changing the way the regulatory intent is ‘interpreted’ in the light of new events and knowledge is more achievable. When you look at this aerial image and the thick black cloud of smoke, would you say that the ‘health and safety’ of the people ‘in the vicinity’ of it was/could have been affected? Or what about the firefighters that attended? Look at the cancer rates of those who attended 9/11. Other factors that could be taken into consideration are mental health impacts, trauma and the wider environmental damage. We can’t control the contents of buildings like we can the structure, so does Regulation 8 oblige designers to consider the impact of those nearby and the dangers to firefighters both immediate and long-term? Maybe it will take a ruling following a claim from fire brigade unions or local residents. ‘Just getting the occupants out alive’ in my opinion is not a sufficient threshold We all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet to drive change and protect our environment, schools, public buildings, workplaces etc. from contamination, disruption
