Cladding concerns
Dear all,
I hope this finds you well, and some of you vaccinated! There seems to finally be light at the end of the tunnel!
I’m sure you will have seen in the news in the last few weeks government beginning to move more proactively to deal with the costs of unsafe cladding on high rise buildings. As you can imagine this has been a hot topic in the architectural press and I have seen article after article on it. It’s an emotive topic for me not just because one of my current projects includes three residential towers in central London, but because I live in a residential tower with potentially unsafe external wall construction.
I was assured by the housing authority when I moved in, just after the Grenfell Tower fire (I part own my flat and part rent from a housing authority) that the building was safe. I’m an architect, I know how these buildings go together; I know the details that are drawn to stop fire spreading; I know of the contractors who built my tower and know they have a decent reputation in the industry; and at the time I trusted that the building regulations held the construction industry to a standard high enough that I could trust my life to them.
Since Grenfell a new certificate has been available, an ESW1 (external wall safety) certificate and my building, along with 1000s of other applied. However, when they lifted the external metal cladding they found ‘workmanship issues related to the quality of the installed fire barriers intermittently across all areas of the façade’- the developer has refused to release the full report to us. This seems to mean that the building as designed was safe, and as built is not. Fire stopping is designed to stop fires at party wall lines for up to an hour- allowing time to bring the fire under control, or for others to evacuate. When they are installed incorrectly things like Grenfell Tower can happen (though that was an extreme example).
As these ‘destructive surveys’ are making clear these workmanship issues are endemic in the industry. Partially this is due to the way in which buildings like these are typically procured. It is called ‘design and build’ and, in a nutshell, the contractor is responsible for the design and building of the project for a fixed price. The client will provide a set of Employer’s Requirements, but anything not specifically detailed in these the contractor is at liberty to build as they wish. Very often, as seems to have been the case in Grenfell, cheaper products are substituted from the ones originally specified and the client is happy to accept the cost saving, though performance and durability of cheaper materials is often not as good.
Additionally, building regulations approval is no longer necessarily given by governmental bodies. Contractors can choose to hire an Approved Inspector who will agree whether or not they think buildings meet regulations. I cast no aspersions on Approved Inspectors as the ones I have worked with have largely been diligent people who push for full and undoubted compliance; but a system in which building regulations approval is dependent on private companies financed by contractors seems potentially problematic to me.
Another strand to this issue is that in the past someone called the Clerk of Works was often on building sites- an independent observer there most days watching and checking workmanship. This is very rare now, again linked to procurement (too complex for this note), and this quality control function is usually filled by site foremen with building regulations or approved inspectors visiting at regular intervals to inspect typical samples of the work… again, not necessarily a problem but arguably open to more exploitation than someone on site all the time.
Of course the headline issue is flammable insulation. Believe it or not insulation ‘of limited combustibility’ (supposed to smoulder and smoke but not burst into flames) was acceptable in the not too recent past, so many flat owners now live in homes signed off as meeting building regulations when completed that are inherently unsafe. When I used to believe in the quality of building regulations it was because I have met some of the excellent and knowledgeable people that advised on them, and on the accompanying British and European standards. If they deemed the risk was low enough to be allowable I trusted them. Perhaps that was naïve.
Furthermore, recent reporting of the Grenfell Inquiry suggests that some insulation companies are misleading specifiers or potentially misrepresenting their products. I’ve relied on this information when specifying building products (not only cladding or insulation); it would not occur to me that someone would mislead on a matter of fire safety where lives could be at stake. Perhaps that was naïve.
I am very fortunate in that my building has two staircases, I don’t live at the very top and as the issues in the walls of my building are to do with workmanship the developer is working with the contractor to cover the cost- I do not foresee a bill into the tens of thousands. (I really hope this remains the case as I do not have tens of thousands sitting around to spare!). I don’t feel actively unsafe in my home. I can usually sleep soundly. On the downside until the cladding is replaced I cannot remortgage or sell my home- this could take years.
Others are not as fortunate, finding that they are liable for huge costs, or that the developer or cladding contractor that built their home has gone bust or disappeared into shell companies leaving them with a huge bill and an unmortgage-able home. The government has recently announced measures- but in my opinion they do not go far enough, and treat the symptoms rather than the problem. The Building Safety Bill is still in its draft form and again, to my fairly inexperienced eye, does not quite go far enough. The 2020 Amendments to Part B (fire safety) of the building regulations dealt largely with sprinklers and wayfinding for fire brigades… good, but again, is it enough?
I work daily with brilliant colleagues and other consultants and contractors who really care; who work with the commercial pressures coming from the budget spreadsheets and push for high quality and safe buildings. I have lost count of the conversations about fire safety we have had- if these towers are built as we expect I will not worry. But realistically all it could take is a windy day or a tired workman, or a misunderstanding in how a product is installed for something to go wrong; and this is not accounting for the small percentage of people who don’t care, or who are intentionally gaming the system. I am far too early in my career to have enough knowledge to fully grasp the full scale and endless complexities of the problems (of which i’ve barely nicked the surface here), or to have a clear idea of the best solution; but what I do see worries me and i’m really not sure that the government has the courage to go far enough to solve it.
The CDM regulations introduced in 1994 have made building sites significantly safer places to be; I hope I am wrong, and that the Building Safety Act, when it becomes law has the same impact on workmanship and building quality.
This has been rather a serious letter, I promise to be more cheerful next time; but this weighs on my mind as residential towers are not going away. They can be lovely places to live- and well designed and built they should be. I hope when I come across them in my career I can always make them so; but architects rarely have power on site now (a letter for another day!), so I just have to hope the government gives me the regulatory tools to insist on quality construction.
Until next time!
Eleanor