Disaster exposed culture of ‘trivialising compliance’, says expert

THE GRENFELL tragedy must engender a culture shift away from “inappropriately trivialising compliance”, a global fire safety expert had warned.

Prof Jose L Torero, of the University of Maryland, criticised the inadequacy of building guidelines and tests which, he said, allowed for “obvious dangers” to be routinely incorporated into cladding systems.

He said the increasing complexity of buildings would drive society towards “irresponsible deregulation by incompetency”.

In his report, Prof Torero said the current regulatory framework relied “very heavily” on competent professionals interpreting the guidelines in such a way that will bridge any gaps and ambiguities.

But he claimed there was no definition of the level of competency required from professionals involved in designing and installing cladding systems which would guarantee the delivery of “acceptable levels of safety”.

He wrote: “The inadequacy of these methods of performance assessment/regulation is such that systems that can introduce obvious dangers can be incorporated by designers in a routine manner.”

He said that in the case of Grenfell Tower, a requirement to “adequately resist” should have been interpreted as leaving no possibility of the spread of fire.