THE GRENFELL inquiry heard more from former Kingspan technical manager Ivor Meredith about the issues surrounding its K15 insulation’s test results, as well as his own ‘serious drug habit’ while working there.
Yesterday, Mr Meredith told the inquiry he was uncomfortable with how the company’s phenolic foam Kooltherm K15 insulation was being marketed, and that he was ‘under pressure’ to get test results that proved it was safe. He said that ‘we were struggling to get the technology to pass, to justify our lie’, and had been fired for gross misconduct in 2015.
When he appealed against this, he told Kingspan ‘I have been put in a situation where I have had to maintain performance that perhaps our products don’t deserve’. He took a ‘negative view’ of the foam, and was uncomfortable with telling the market that it was Class 0, which ‘suggested it was safe for use on tall buildings when it was not in all cases’.
One test in 2007 became a ‘raging inferno’ with temperatures reaching 600 degrees Celsius, and the insulation was ‘burning under its own steam’, according to a report he made to colleagues. Supervisors had to extinguish the test because it ‘risked setting fire to the laboratory’, and Mr Meredith was ‘shocked that the phenolic was burning ferociously. I sent a very animated report around to my superiors to make sure they were aware’.
Recommending adding fire retardant, Mr Meredith was then criticised by managers for ‘not being very positive about Kingspan products’, and added that ‘I don’t think they were concerned in the same way as me ... I felt I was never heard on issues like this’. By the time he was fired, the product had been sold for use on ‘at least’ 230 high rises, and he felt pressure to ensure it did not have to be ‘pulled off the wall’ by delivering proof of its safety.
He said that ‘there was a lot of critical stuff going on that could have resulted in major claims against Kingspan so I had to keep my head above water, and sort it out for Kingspan’, and was worried the company would be accused of ‘misselling’. Mr Meredith also described how Kingspan worked with Local Authority Building Control to obtain a certificate for K15 declaring it was of ‘limited combustibility’, which was ‘wrong’ and ‘later withdrawn’.
The company ‘did not know’ K15 would be used on Grenfell, and said building regulations at the time ‘permitted its use on tall buildings as long as the overall cladding system was compliant. However, it apologised for ‘process shortcomings during the period of 2005 to 2014’. Mr Meredith also said it was ‘common knowledge’ that Kingspan was relying on a fire safety test certificate from ‘old technology’ for the K15 product.
He said staff were ‘aware’ that a 2005 test had been done with materials featuring a ‘different fire performance to that sold from 2006 onwards’, with the inquiry having heard that Kingspan had withdrawn test certificates from that test: ‘It was very difficult – although I was constantly pushing back trying to box out the formulations used and the different characteristics of the product – I was basically being told that the materials were the same, the new technology was essentially better. But it performed differently in fire. I wouldn’t say worse, it just performed differently.’
The inquiry also uncovered documents from a secret test in December 2008, which said K15 ‘burnt very ferociously’ as it ‘spectacularly failed’, despite having been ‘advertised for use on high rises for two years’. The test, held by BRE, utilised the newer form of K15, which analysis said was ‘very different in a fire situation to the previous technology which has passed several similar tests’.
While the older insulation ‘would turn into a light ash and fall away leaving [no] substance to feed the fire’, the new foam ‘burnt very ferociously and gave the top cavity barrier a serious hammering’. Kingspan officials said of that test that the insulation ‘was burning on its own steam and the BRE had to extinguish the test early because it was endangering setting fire to the laboratory’.
Mr Meredith noted one of the changes brought in was to perforate foil facers, which made it ‘more robust and easier to manufacture’, and his analysis stated: ‘Perforations in the Phenolic foil facers have caused a reduction in the Euroclass when tested... Loss of the perforations may help? In all honesty from what I have seen the way the phenolic burned is of the most concern. Therefore we need to add a fire retardant. Which could help us get Class O.’
Subsequent emails sent to superiors Philip Heath and Malcom Rochefort stated that the ‘question of K15s bad fire performance is no longer just an internal one. It would seem Offsite [Kingspan’s sister company who used the product] had a very dramatic test failure’. Other emails showed how he was coming under ‘increasing pressure’ to explain the product’s fire performance to Offsite colleagues.
Mr Heath ‘did not respond to his questions’ and ‘merely asked who was grilling him’, while emails between senior Kingspan managers and the British Board of Agrement (BBA) were shown, coming after the latter recognised that the certificate it had awarded ‘did not clarify that the product was suitable for use only when used in the specific set up which was tested’. It wrote to Kingspan to tell them that the certificate would be changed.
After Kingspan told the BBA in response that it would have ‘no option’ but to pass ‘cost implications’ onto the BBA, Mr Heath ordered Mr Meredith and colleague Gareth Mills to let the BBA proposals ‘gather dust’. The Guardian has now reported on more information from Mr Meredith’s evidence, including that he had ‘quite a serious drug habit’ and fell asleep at work, but this was ‘brushed off as a bit of a joke … by them [Kingspan] and by me’ until he was sacked in 2015.
A landlord had reported him to Kingspan in 2010, but between then and 2015 he ‘held a pivotal role’ at the company, and he admitted he had become ‘embroiled in a deliberate and calculated deceit by Kingspan’ over the test results. He also said he had to ‘fabricate a story’ to maintain the panels were safe to use, but complained to his manager that ‘we are stretching the truth’.
Mr Meredith described himself as a ‘functioning addict’ at the time, and said that he went on to help the company ‘send letters of assurance on hundreds of projects’. Asked by inquiry counsel Kate Grange whether, having ‘been tasked with defending’ the company’s position ‘you knowingly misled a number of professionals’ about K15’s fire performance, he said ‘we followed the strategy that was outlined … yes’.
Ms Grange then said ‘you knew that neither Celotex RS5000 nor Kingspan K15 should be used on buildings above 18 metres didn’t you?’; he replied that ‘I knew there we had serious holes in our information, yes. I tried to do my best to sit on my thoughts … It was all a major headache. It was more than a major headache: it was a nightmare’. On his addiction, he said his work had ‘gone completely down the tubes, I couldn’t keep to any deadlines, I couldn’t write coherently’.
Notes from a February 2015 meeting to address problems with his work stated that Mr Meredith was ‘perspiring a lot’ and was ‘exceptionally tired’, and while he was eventually dismissed, in a meeting with senior management he said: ‘It’s been known to the business I think that I have always had a drug problem. Obviously there were a number of times people have joked with me, when I have been going to Amsterdam, with work saying keep away from those “space cakes”.
‘Obviously I am a bit of a DJ and a raver so people know this sort of culture mixes with drugs ... I am surprised that nobody thought that my part-time hobby and lifestyle had taken a turn for the worse 18-months ago.’