Its beneficial elements are beyond doubt, but does the much anticipated Building Safety Bill fall short on product testing, asks Alex Bardett
IN JULY 2020, the UK government published the greatly anticipated Building Safety Bill, a draft landmark document which is set to reform the building and fire safety system, and improve residents’ safety in their homes. The bill marks one of the biggest changes to building safety in 40 years and will introduce a new era of accountability, making it clear where the responsibility for managing risk lies throughout the processes of design, construction and occupation of buildings.
Although the bill provides a framework for accountability and safety, it falls short of tackling product testing and its important role in assuring that the systems installed are fit for purpose. With this in mind, is there sufficient guidance here, or are there just too many loopholes and unanswered questions?
The Building Safety Bill gives residents greater power when it comes to assuring their security. It will enable them to have access to safety information and give them the opportunity to develop safety proposals if they feel their security is being compromised. As such, the bill will introduce tougher sanctions for building owners who fail to meet their obligations.
Central to ensuring the regime is effective will be a powerful new building safety regulator, housed within the Health and Safety Executive. This will have responsibility for implementing and enforcing a more stringent regime for higher risk buildings, and will oversee the safety and performance of all buildings.
Ambiguity on testing
As stated, although the bill is an important framework that will hopefully provide greater accountability and safety in building design, there are some ambiguities, the first and foremost of which is in relation to testing. Clause 92 of the Construction Products section of the draft bill states: ‘The bill provides powers so that all construction products marketed in the UK fall under a regulatory regime, allowing them to be withdrawn from the market if they present a risk.’
Whilst this is important, as it will ensure that unfit products are not used on building schemes, there is scant mention of the testing needed to ensure these products are fit for purpose. How then are they going to determine which products are a potential risk?
In the public inquiry for the King’s Cross fire, which tore its way through the London Underground station in 1987, it was stipulated that going forward, combustible and flammable materials could not be used on a development. The inquiry came to this conclusion because the cause of the fire was said to be a discarded match, which had caught on the wooden escalators that had been in use for more than 76 years.
As wood is a highly flammable material, it beggars belief how they were deemed appropriate for all those years. Nevertheless, risky materials are continually in riser shaft design. Glass reinforced plastic (GRP) grating is regularly installed within the riser shaft, as it is a cheap ‘value engineered’ product which is widely accepted as being able to prevent falls from height. However, its effectiveness is questionable.
When installed in a riser’s chimney style environment, GRP grating with an isophthalic (iso) resin is found to be extremely flammable. It is an oil based product, which readily burns. This makes the BS 476-7: 1997: Fire tests on building materials and structures. Method of test to determine the classification of the surface spread of flame of products classification – a testing method to determine the classification of the surface spread of flame of products for wall and floor finishes – unsuitable. That is because it is not testing the product in the environment in which it is intended for use, within a riser shaft.
With safety at stake, why is this material used in high rise construction? Why are products with high fire resistance not being used, such as phenolic GRP (identifiable, as it is red/brown in colour) or steel modular riser flooring units?
Appropriate testing
The answer to that is simply that the testing is neither rigorous enough, nor understood properly. Iso resin GRP grating is said to meet BS 476-7, but this test is in flat sheet form, tested vertically. It does meet this test, but when it is installed in its real time environment – horizontally in a grating form, rather than a flat sheet – the reality is far different and it burns vigorously.
The design of the riser shaft maintenance flooring should be part of the designer’s risk assessment and taken into consideration from the very beginning, at Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) stage one. At the moment, architects only see the riser shaft as a risk in terms of falls from height and not fire; their considerations are only on the perimeter of the shaft as a defence against fire.
Allowing the use of dormant fuel cells such as resin based GRP to be used in a chimney is adding to the risk. When designing the riser zone they are not covering all of the risks, and therefore main contractors will continue to install a cheap, flammable product which they believe is safe to use as the client’s permanent maintenance platform.
In addition, construction supply chains need to know what they are purchasing. When the building safety regulator comes on board, it is likely to find hundreds of buildings in which GRP grating with an iso resin has been installed. Parties such as contractors, developers, architects and main contractors could be liable for removing these non conforming products, resulting in millions of pounds of retrofitting.
Given effective testing and fire resistant products, these situations could be avoided. The Building Safety Bill must therefore place greater emphasis on improving product testing in the environment in which it is going to be employed, because the current framework contains too many loopholes that compromise safety.
Test conditions
We have undertaken evidence based, independent fire tests in the environment in which our riser zone product solution will be employed. Tests were carried out in the Building Research Establishment (BRE) fire hall in Watford, where it was found that when the product is used in combination with a fire compound, two hours of horizontal fire protection is achieved.
Furthermore, units have been tested to prove that under a fire test, there was no loss of integrity for 1.5 hours at a temperature of 1,000°C. The product worked as a barrier to the spread of smoke and flame, and prevented the risk of falling from height during construction.
Gaps to address
It must be said that the draft Building Safety Bill represents a monumental step change for the construction industry in terms of safety, and it will go some way to inciting change – and for the better. There are, however, still some loopholes remaining in terms of fire safety. The main concern – as previously mentioned – lies in the fact that product testing is an area that the bill has evaded.
Testing is of primal importance to ensure that construction products hit the mark on fire safety. If testing is not an essential consideration, where does that leave the industry?
Alex Bardett is managing director of Ambar Kelly