It’s one that I’ve been following, considering that I’m in the fire safety industry. Having worked for one of the main testing houses mentioned in the article (though in a consultancy role, not a testing role), these are huge issues.
Reading the article, it mentions buck passing and the like – that’s something that came up a lot when I was in construction. Facade engineers always passed the issues on to the fire engineers, which was always a joke, as the facade engineers did nothing to earn their fees, trying to pass it on to others (architects to design, fire engineers to confirm fire acceptance). My response was always – if it’s not a tested system, it’s not compliant.
It mentions LABC – I don’t trust them with a barge pole. They’ve approved a sprinkler system as being compliant, though have this has failed the British Standard tests and it has never been issued a compliance certificate – the same firm that manufactures those was threatened with legal action on a number of occasions from my firm at the time for misrepresentation and lying, saying it had passed a test – we hadn’t tested it to BS standards and they weren’t issuing our report in full alongside.
It’s all a huge issue and I feel sorry for those trapped in high rises that are fitted with it and are being given the run around by the firms building it. However, it isn’t just poor materials – shoddy workmanship is also coming to light. The University I work for has recently discovered major issues with fire safety from three buildings they had constructed in 1999. We can’t chase the firms for damages, as they’ve all gone bust and we’re out of time to do so. Construction is a huge mess in the UK and we’re slowly waking up to it.
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
.
