DR BARBARA Lane, one of the expert witnesses for the Grenfell inquiry, stated in evidence that fire safety consultant Exova gave ‘entirely inadequate’ advice on the project.
Building, Evening Standard and Construction Manager Magazine reported on Dr Lane’s evidence at the inquiry, particularly her view that Exova gave ‘entirely inadequate’ advice to the project team ‘at a time when there was confusion among contractors about safety requirements’, specifically referring to the company’s reports for Studio E and Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).
Dr Lane said Exova’s suggestion that the refurbishment would have ‘no adverse impact’ was ‘very serious evidence of professional negligence’, and that reports for Studio E and KCTMO ‘failed to meet minimum standards in numerous respects’. She compiled a report for the inquiry on the ‘adequacy’ of Exova’s advice for the project, to which it was appointed in 2012 – specifically to undertake a fire safety strategy before and during the refurbishment.
While not retained after Rydon was appointed main contractor in 2014, it ‘continued to give advice on an ad-hoc basis’, and Dr Lane found that its work was ‘entirely inadequate’, with its ‘primary failing’ being it did not look ‘properly’ at the risk of fire spread on external walls. She ‘stood by’ her view that Exova’s opinion that overcladding Grenfell would have ‘no adverse effect’ on fire spread, without ‘actually analysing the proposals’, was ‘very serious evidence of professional negligence’.
Exova repeated its suggestion of ‘no adverse effect’ across ‘several generations’ of its strategy, the last of which was published in November 2013 with an assurance that the view would be confirmed in a ‘future issue of the report’, which was never written. Inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick asked Dr Lane if it wasn’t acceptable for a fire safety adviser to say they had no information and would deal with issues later.
She agreed ‘it could be helpful’ for them to record they had not been given any information about key elements ‘potentially as a warning sign’, but these assurances were ‘misplaced […] I don’t understand how you can give a view if you haven’t seen information’. She accepted a consultant would be able to offer a view on the potential for fire spread without seeing detailed plans, but not on the safety of the work.
She would expect a ‘reasonably competent’ fire engineer to know a building was being overclad and set out as an ‘absolute bare minimum’ statutory guidance for insulation, cavity barriers and external walls. Questioned by inquiry counsel Kate Grange about Exova’s opening statement, which argued reports for a specialist audience ‘did not need advice’ on performance requirements of materials needed to meet building regulations on fire spread, she said: ‘It’s no justification in my mind.
‘Exova wrote a scope of work, offered a detailed fire strategy, were appointed to do so, and B4 [of Approved Document B of the Building Regulations (ADB), relating to fire spread] is one of the five significant requirements and it required information to be provided. Who gets to decide which parts of the Building Regulations are either irrelevant or so well known that you don’t even need to mention them in a detailed fire safety strategy? I don’t agree that is a valid justification whatsoever.’
Exova would have been expected to ‘know the building was being overclad…and then to set out, at an absolute bare minimum, the statutory guidance for insulation, cavity barriers, and the external surface. If you are given no drawings whatsoever about the overcladding, and that has happened many times, the best thing left for you to do professionally is to simply state the statutory guidance minimum requirements’.
Ms Grange added that Exova had made a similar suggestion in relation to Rydon and Harley Facades, who were not described as ‘needing a pointer’ on regulations, Dr Lane adding: ‘As the evidence shows, that was also incorrect. Harley asked some questions later and they needed to be answered. And they were not.’
Asked if it was the case at the time that specialist contractors needed help interpreting ADB, Dr Lane said: ‘My experience is that principal contractors and specialist cladding contractors needed assistance in understanding what the fire safety requirements were when they were going on to do their part of the job, which is the really detailed piece of work about materials and how to piece together their location.
‘If all the professionals on the design team were well aware of the Building Regulations, it doesn’t counterbalance or remove the duty that Exova had. They offered a detailed fire safety strategy and so a detailed fire safety strategy needed to be provided.’
She also said that at the time there had been a ‘significant amount of uncertainty’ over material fire safety requirements, to the point that in 2013 her employer Arup was ‘sufficiently worried about materials and certificates’ that it started running in house fire and facades seminars. She stated that ‘my experience in 2013 was this whole issue of contractors and other parties beseeching me saying “but this document says it’s class 0 and therefore it’s acceptable”.
‘I was involved in many conversations, even on our own projects at Arup, trying to explain the performance of insulation’. Requirements for cavity barriers to be placed around windows was a “common defect” at the time, and not all clients appointed fire engineers on projects, so those that had chosen ‘should have had access to competent advice’.
Dr Lane cited an email from Exova consultant Cate Cooney describing the project as ‘making an existing crap condition worse’; Dr Lane said this ‘had no justification’, while the email’s mention of the need to ‘massage’ elements and ‘no sprinklers wanted’ raised concerns about ‘the absence of a recognition that protecting people is the primary goal of a fire safety engineer and the fire safety design solutions they are responsible for’.
This ‘culture’ was ‘not unique’ to Exova, but Dr Lane criticised it for failing to spend enough time surveying Grenfell for the ‘existing building’ strategy, with two hours spent on site in May 2012 ‘wholly insufficient’. She suggested it should have been an all day job for two people, and criticised assumptions by Ms Cooney in the strategy that fed into the site visit.
Exova’s report assumed Grenfell had been built in compliance with ‘the prevailing standards of the day’, and had been maintained, while any amendments had been carried out with the approval of regulatory authorities. Dr Lane called this ‘wholly inappropriate’, adding: ‘The whole point of an existing fire safety strategy is to be clear on what is there.’
Later, she said Exova should have warned project teams the plans would ‘worsen safety’, noting there has been ‘a problem in the construction industry’ of ‘forgetting’ about the responsibilities of ‘protecting people’. She said ‘there is no justification for “making an existing cr*p condition worse”’, and that a fire engineer was ‘responsible for assessing the risk to life and formulating a package of measures to protect life’.
Asked whether she thought Exova should have made other parties aware of their thoughts, Dr Lane said ‘yes, I do’; elaborating that the attitude in the email ‘reflects a culture and behaviour I have experienced and observed elsewhere in the construction industry through my own professional work. I think for me, fire safety engineering is about protecting people. It’s a massive responsibility, I used the word scary earlier and I mean that most sincerely.
‘When you forget that and you get caught up in the game of making things work getting things through, you forget about your primary responsibilities which is protecting people. That has been a problem in the construction industry based on my own experience, I don’t just mean fire safety engineering professionals, I want to make that clear.
‘We’re one role in a whole scheme of people who have duties ultimately to build things properly ... to protect people in the event of a fire. The ultimate purpose is to protect human beings.’