THE LATEST hearings at the Grenfell inquiry saw Kingspan’s former technical advisor admit some of its marketing material ‘could have been misleading’, while a Celotex executive was ‘shocked’ at its approach to testing three years before the fatal fire.
Building and The Guardian reported on the latest evidence heard at the inquiry, with former Kingspan technical advisor Gareth Mills stating that the company had been seeking to ‘maximise what scope they could get on approvals’ for the K15 insulation, and adding that he was unaware that it had, ‘at any stage’, been dishonest about the testing issues.
Mr Mills worked for Kingspan between 2003 and 2014, and the inquiry had heard that the company had been ‘attempting to avoid’ any mention in a certificate issued by the British Board of Agrement (BBA) that K15 could only be used above 18m if it used the specific system tested in 2005. He was asked by inquiry counsel Kate Grange if he accepted ‘there was a culture […] of trying to minimise the limitations on K15’ rather than ‘being transparent and accurate’ with customers and the BBA.
He responded that ‘I would say, yes, they did want to maximise, you know, what scope they could get on approvals and things like that’, but added that ‘I don’t think at any stage they were sort of dishonest about what test data they had; or not that I was aware of, anyway’. An email was then shown to the inquiry from technical manager Philip Heath to Mr Mills in July 2008 on ‘potential revisions’ to the draft of a BBA report on K15.
Mr Heath suggested replacing the word ‘blockwork’ with ‘non combustible’, adding that this ‘might allow us to use a little spin in future’, and Mr Mills was asked by Ms Grange if he was aware at the time that ‘even without’ relevant test data ‘there was a deliberate marketing strategy being pursued by Kingspan to widen the scope of this certificate and other certificates?’. He responded that ‘I suppose they did want things to be as general as possible, yeah’.
Ms Grange then asked if it had ‘ever occur[ed] to you that this was a matter of life safety?’; to which Mr Mills said ‘I don’t propose to be an expert and know exactly how much effect certain details have’. She then said that ‘you must have been aware that there were potential health and safety consequences as to whether or not this product was used in tall buildings, including tall residential buildings?’.
In response, Mr Mills said ‘um, yeah, I knew there was a requirement to follow regulations, yeah’; Ms Grange asked in turn ‘what underpins those regulations is life safety isn’t it?’; to this, he said ‘um, yeah I assume that’s probably something that’s involved when they’re writing them, yes’. He admitted that he thought there was a ‘possibility’ that the K15 marketing material had been misleading, after inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick ‘intervened’.
Mr Mills was asked about a certificate for K15 obtained from Local Authority Building Control (LABC), which ‘wrongly’ stated that the insulation was a ‘material of limited combustibility’; Sir Martin asked whether ‘it didn’t trouble you that it was misleading?’, to which Mr Mills replied ‘yeah, maybe that was a … you know, a little bit of a jump perhaps’ Pressed further, he said ‘it didn’t mislead me, no’.
Sir Martin noted that ‘no, no, that’s not the question I asked […] did you think it was misleading…in the sense that it was liable to mislead someone who didn’t have the same degree of technical knowledge that you had?’. To this, Mr Mills said ‘it’s a possibility, looking back, yeah’. The inquiry later heard from former Celotex product manager Deborah Berger, who wrote ‘WTF?’ in the margin of a test report after the company had used magnesium oxide barriers to improve fire performance.
Ms Berger said that colleagues had ‘alerted her’ that the test had been ‘rigged’ with fire retardant panels, but that the modifications had been left out of marketing literature, and she was so alarmed that she noted ‘WTF?’ next to a photograph of the test rig. She told the inquiry that the note was ‘shorthand for shock’, adding that ‘I didn’t think Celotex would do that. I thought Celotex was a good company that prided itself on doing the right thing, on being honest.
‘I was really shocked by this. It appeared to me Celotex had taken some materials and installed them to pass the test’. She added that the issues with this test were ‘like a secret, something we didn’t talk about. I wish we had’. Questioned by inquiry counsel Richard Millett, she said her concerns were never acted upon, adding: ‘Things were shared with me about the testing of the product and then when I tried to be honest and open about it and talk to people about it, it didn’t go very far.’
Ms Berger also noted that she had reported the ‘tweaks’ in the test to her manager Paul Evans, and shared that ‘efforts’ had been made by Celotex to keep photos of the test rig out of the test report produced by the Building Research Establishment. She later tried to have a certificate about the insulation changed in a way she knew was ‘misleading’, with this particular certificate ‘often relied upon by building control officers’.
The wording she had suggested to LABC ‘misrepresented’ the testing and ‘made it seem as if the material’ could be used in a ‘range’ of cladding systems on buildings 18m or taller, when ‘in fact it could only be used as tested’. She told the inquiry: ‘I was uncomfortable with the wording. I agree it was untrue … I don’t think I knew at the time how to challenge it. I was going along with things.’