Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 35 - Part 3: Navigating New Fire Safety Regulations: Insights & Future Trends - Jay Ridings
45 Plays1 year ago
In the final part of the fire safety episode, we explore the latest fire safety regulations and future trends in the industry post-Grenfell. Key topics include recent legislative changes, the importance of proper record-keeping, the shift towards digital documentation, the cultural mindset shift within the industry, and potential challenges with new materials. Our experts also discuss the significance of the Hackett review and the Building Safety Act 2022 in enhancing fire safety practices.
🎧 Listen in and learn about:
- The latest regulations post-Grenfell and their impacts.
- Balancing construction safety and management aspects.
- The role and importance of the "golden thread" of information.
- Transitioning from paper files to electronic information systems.
- Navigating new construction materials and their potential risks.
Recommended
Transcript
Overview of Fire Safety Regulations Post-Grenfell
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to our final and third part of this fire safety episode. And we're looking at, in this part, regulations and the future of fire safety. So um I think we've we touched on this but very briefly in in either the first or second part around the fact that there's been you know new regulations brought in since Grenfell and how people look at things. What are the, um I suppose, the the more recent regulations that have come in and sort of what changes is that brought in best practice?
00:00:27
Speaker
Oh, you're testing me now, Matt. so um um yeah i this this is I do think this is actually a challenge for for us as building surveyors and and the industry more widely, because there have been so many changes since Grenfell.
Updates to Fire Safety and Building Regulations
00:00:42
Speaker
So you you had you had changes and updates to the building regulations um relating to um combustible materials no longer being um accepted in in buildings over 80 meters.
00:00:56
Speaker
um and then And then you had an update with the Fire Safety Act and so obligations on duty holders with fire risk assessments and then incorporating the um the external walls.
00:01:10
Speaker
um And then most recently, i think I think maybe I've missed some there. I think maybe the building regulations were then updated again, possibly, um with some further changes. And then more recently, you've had the Building Safety Act 2022, and you've had the higher building um the high-risk buildings regulations 2023. So they've all sorts of changes have happened.
00:01:35
Speaker
um it's it ah And then in conjunction with that, and and arguably in response to that, you you can also see that practices are changing in terms of the construction of buildings and the management of buildings. And yeah, and so it it's all positive. it's positive changes. And if you if you revisit building safer futures by um um in the Hackett Review, you can see it's positive stuff. You can see that it's maybe not absolutely you know um point by point, prescriptively matching what the recommendations are, but actually,
00:02:22
Speaker
ah in it very much that in the spirit of it, and it's not too far away either, the points about addressing the culture, about having clearer regulations, about having a regulator enforce the regulate regulations, what has come in um is very much addressing those points from what from what i can from what I can see.
Is Fire Safety Focused on Construction or Management?
00:02:48
Speaker
and um yeah and so it is is's good It's good stuff. ah you You mentioned something that there that's caught my my interest, which is so some of it is focused on construction, some of it is focused on the management aspects.
00:03:03
Speaker
Has that been quite evenly split, do you think? Or as if is it slightly more focused on the management aspects? of that I know that had ah quite a lot of airtime because maybe sprinkler systems hadn't been put in, or um certain things that had been raised hadn't been dealt with. Or is it more focused on the construction side where you know potentially the wrong materials have been sold, used, or yeah procured, or whatever?
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, you're saying it's it you' seeing it focused more focused on on one area than another, or is it quite balanced? That's a really good point. no it's it i mean the the whole One of the absolute key recommendations um from the Hackett Review was to have an audit trail for a building so you could follow through that building through its construction then any variations that happen in in its construction then you have a ah record of the actual as built what has been built if you're showing cavity barriers and fire stops
00:04:01
Speaker
or you're showing an internal or firestopping detail, if you're showing 60 minute compartmentation there, 90 minute there or whatever the structure gives you, however, that is an absolute correct record of of of what is being built.
Transition from Paper to Digital Records in Fire Safety
00:04:19
Speaker
And then that is then used throughout the life of a building until it the use of that building ends and that's what what was termed the golden or is termed the golden thread of information and I there's probably no one who bears witness to that more than a building surveyor going to an existing asset and then trying to understand that building what the fire strategy is and what's being constructed and has it been
00:04:46
Speaker
Has it been constructed in accordance with design? and if you're if you're monitoring um If you're monitoring a build, which is is also one of the things that um we do at TFT and I do personally, I probably am a ah greater voice within the you know beyond the project team focused on the quality of the record information and making sure that when the development team's gone,
00:05:14
Speaker
And people are going to be coming to me to say, have you seen the O and&Ms? What's the fire strategy? Can you point me in the right direction for this? And you know you've got that property management team in place that that is absolutely um you know that information is available. And and that has got that that has got a lot better. um And you you we tend to see now electronic information that's available rather than these kind of lever arch files, which are all over the place, missing pages, coffee stains on them.
00:05:44
Speaker
it's get we're We're getting there, but it we're we're we're still not in entirely there. um I'll tell you, the coffee stains are good though. It shows that the documents are red.
Frequency and Regulations of Fire Safety Reviews
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, you like the sort of dogged pages to show that they've been pages have been turned and looked at. Yeah, yeah absolutely. so so that there's There is that balance, there is that balance you know in and the Building Safety Act looks at both. it's it's It's looking at the construction and making sure that the design is really progressed to a satisfactory stage before you get to that the the gateway where you can actually then start building the the building.
00:06:24
Speaker
um and and And then there's a requirement further down the line, once you have a building, an existing building, you then need to, that building for high-risk buildings anyway, then needs to be registered and there needs to be a safety case report assessing the risk for that building structurally via safety perspective. so So I would say it's been fairly evenly handled, so you're looking at new construction and existing buildings. And that and that comes out of the hack review. Awesome. I've got a couple of questions off the back of that. I'm finding this really interesting. So is there a ah regulation around how often ah these sort of fire safety reviews should be carried out? Because um obviously you mentioned it's not just a case of um buildings built correctly in the first place, then it stays perfect. So obviously changes get made to the building over time. so
00:07:17
Speaker
Are there requirements over how often checks are are done to to ensure the building still complies? Or is it up to the ah the property owner or management team to decide what they think is appropriate?
Future of Digital Records and Digital Twins in Buildings
00:07:27
Speaker
Oh, that's a good one. um it's probably it's It's slightly complicated. So if you look at the safety case report once you've got an existing building, that is essentially an overview of all the individual risk assessments. So in terms of frequency of risk assessments,
00:07:46
Speaker
for that building. It's not covered in what is quite a high level legislation. It would then go down further to those individual risk assessments. If you then look at the um fire risk assessments, they then need to be renewed in accordance with the reform order and then the Fire Safety Act, which typically, I don't know if this is expressly stated, but you typically see those updated annually.
00:08:17
Speaker
to make sure that all the shortfalls are being actions in a relatively short term period and nothing's being left to develop over over longer periods.
00:08:30
Speaker
um and then And then in terms of kind of alterations to the buildings, I don't know where it stipulated that you need to have that, but it that the in the spirit of the legislation, the point is during the construction period, you need to be recording all of the variations and you need to have that as built.
00:08:50
Speaker
documentation at the end and then the the logic is that with an existing building as alterations have undertaken the same the same applies essentially. Awesome okay so what there's a really interesting point you've raised there around the the the collecting the information as as a different construction stages are carried out or post completion and so on yeah ongoing ongoing changes and and you nicely touched on the fact that you've Historically, a big thick leverage files and now it's becoming more electronic. do Do you envisage that we'll get to a point where like we've discussed on on other episodes, digital twins and and and so on? And obviously that at the moment, that's probably too complicated for most buildings because it's one thing to build the model in the first place, which is quite an expensive process anyway. um And then the other point entirely is taking what's happened on site and and updating the fact that a particular wall has changed slightly and keeping that model up to date.
00:09:50
Speaker
So is there, yeah, I suppose, where's the the happy medium between sort of the one extreme of paper files, which are really hard to obviously go through and find the relevant information quickly to digital twins where find it might be very quick to find the information, but it's really hard to keep up to date in a simple way because the amount of software development that goes into that. um So what what do you think is the sort of the best level of record keeping that makes it useful information ah without being too to onerous?
00:10:20
Speaker
ah in In my personal opinion, and I think this is my experience just working in an office, we we're going paperless. So yes, a digital twin, maybe um um maybe we're not there.
00:10:37
Speaker
straight away um and maybe it is difficult to produce that and also you've got different complexity types of you know complexities with with buildings so some buildings lend themselves more readily than that than others to that type of and information but I do think ultimately we're going to we're we're going digital it needs to all be digital the paper copies in in the construction, in the property management world, they're not the way the best way of managing a building. what i
Cultural Changes in Fire Safety Post-Legislation
00:11:13
Speaker
What I would say is that it does need to be suitable. So if you take asbestos information, for example, so an asbestos management plan that you need for a building, the purpose there is that if someone's coming to work at a building,
00:11:29
Speaker
um As well as occupying the building, you you you have that there to manage risk. So you're not going to get someone who's going to come and and put a hole through you know asbestos insulating board or you know or remove a a gasket or whatever it it may be with asbestos in it. so Paper copies of information is still useful up to a degree because if you have a ah subcontractor turning up to site, you know it may be that
00:12:00
Speaker
paper copies, hard copies are the most suitable form of communication to say, look, here's this, you need to be you need to be um aware of that and don't touch it. So that there is a certain a certain use for hard copies, but I'd say generally we should be going electronic as quickly as possible. And that is the best way that is the best way to manage a property. Yeah. I think, personally, I think that I agree with you. And I think that's because where where where records are electronic, it's it's so much quicker to be able to look stuff up and and and relate different aspects together, um you know rather than it's a big leverage file and see appendix D and file three. and um yes you You can find stuff instantly and make those decisions much more quickly. Yeah, yeah it's much much more user friendly for for everyone. and And there's nothing holding us back from that being reality. And if you think of all the opportunities there are,
00:12:57
Speaker
with ah with with um electronic information with um BIM and you know, and even um ah what I'm trying to say, you know the the the camera and the sensor technology that we have, the scanning technology, it is it is all there to actually shoot us forwards to record information in the absolute best way. So not just sort of theoretical you know lines on ah on a black background, but actually virtual virtual surveys of a building
00:13:34
Speaker
linked to other information relating to condition, fire, whatever. So it's all there. I can't see anything other than sort of it coming on leaps and bounds in a fairly short period of time, but we'll we'll see. I might be proven completely completely wrong, but it's hard to see otherwise.
00:13:53
Speaker
No, I agree. The rate of technology change, I wouldn't be surprised if one day you can walk into a building, hold your phone camera up, and it somehow can sense through the layers that it's got these types of materials based on how they've sent a sonar thingy back or whatever it might be. That might be our tech by then. Yeah. So yeah, there'll be all sorts.
00:14:13
Speaker
ah i I suppose yeah just tying back to that then the the fact that we started off the episode talking about how it was ultimately of the issues we've seen in the past are driven by cultural um yeah mindsets throughout throughout different areas. Have you have you seen a shift then since new legislation has been brought in and people are starting to look at things differently? Are you seeing a positive change yeah over the last few years around fire safety and and and what's been going on? Yeah, absolutely. So I think we can see We can see real positive change from the top, so the legislation, the response to legislation, um moving away from combustible materials.
00:14:55
Speaker
So using non-combustible materials in the external walls, using non-combustible cladding, but also um insulation. um So you can you can see that sort of change, but also on the ground with um property managers, with contractors, subcontractors. There's there's there's definitely, I think, a sort of joint purpose unifying people where maybe at one point people thought things didn't matter. um It didn't matter if you put the cavity barrier. in I mean, presumably presumably there aren't many people who would have emitted a cavity barrier if they thought it was going to lead to people dying. But I do think that I do think people maybe didn't appreciate what certain components
00:15:53
Speaker
do. i mean you know in ah In a developed society, maybe it's it's easy to become slightly blasé about what out what each of us do, what our role is, what the role of different components are. so you know I don't think there's sort of sort of there's been sort of malevolence, if you like.
00:16:14
Speaker
with certainly people building buildings and managing buildings. but So I think i think we've sit we're we're now seeing this positive change and an awareness of what components do when building a building and you know forming compartment walls, building building external walls, but also in terms of property management, you know the importance of the fire strategy, the importance of the fire risk assessment,
00:16:40
Speaker
um what to various you know What do those fire shutters do? What's the evacuation policy? um you know If that alarm goes off, what happens? It's very much in in the forefront of everyone's minds, from my experience, and people are really getting it that that needs to that needs to be done properly. That said, I'm not sure everyone quite It's quite, as we've covered, it can be quite complicated. And I'm not sure everyone fully understands that, that you know
00:17:11
Speaker
that um or maybe they understand they understand it's complicated, but don't actually understand um you know what the what the details are. So there's there's still room for improvement, but there's definitely there's definitely positive change. ah it's really It's really good to hear, I think. I completely agree. It's it's difficult to... potentially be motivated is the wrong word or, but to to to sort of comply with certain things when you don't necessarily and understand. Yeah, because I suppose, you know, say what, what does it matter if I put that in or not? Because but and I suppose pre-gram for I can't think of a
00:17:48
Speaker
a fire incident like it, in terms of there hasn't been that type of big incident to drive the, this is why we need to have these things in place. It's like, well, are we just worrying a bit too much because nothing's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's absolutely it. Yeah. And you look at, you know, we tend to like, well, not always actually think of some examples where this isn't the case, but we tend to over-engineer things.
00:18:16
Speaker
we we get things into a very safe place. And as I think I said, you know maybe there's a complacency there that, well, we of course it's safe. We do everything like you know to to the nth degree. and And then actually things, I think what's happened with the fire safety world is that there's a there's a wake there's been a wake up that actually things haven't been they haven't been great. They haven't been over-engineered. In fact, they're they're actually pretty dangerous.
00:18:44
Speaker
You know, it's ah it's's it's been a sort of an awakening almost. um and And that then, I think if you look at the number of legislative changes, the the the changes in pra pit the way people are practicing, I mean, you get people, who you you you meet professionals and people on site who, it's not everyone's on board, but I would say on the whole, um it's been a very positive reaction and a common purpose in the industry.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, and and and um and on that note, hopefully that the the recent Diagonal Fire, which luckily no one was injured in, um that hopefully that acts as a, you know, the the reminder that's needed. It's not just ah an unlucky one-off. It can happen at any time and therefore the importance of but pushing on with that legislation and those changes and and mindset, you know, culture changes that are important and then need
Risks and Benefits of New Fire Safety Materials
00:19:33
Speaker
need to need to happen. So hopefully that gives us a positive push of yeah reinforcing that um yeah the the cut the culture change that's been happening. Absolutely. One question I wanted to ask before we finish this the final topic is ah we've covered regulations and I think we've covered that quite nicely.
00:19:51
Speaker
um But one of the big drivers has been you know materials like cladding that we we we discussed earlier. So imagine there's new materials coming to market to try and you know replace things that have been used in the past. Is there a a risk with new materials that they might not be trying to test in the right way or ah other issues they bring in because I'm thinking back to like rat concrete where you know that was introduced in 30 years on week we find out that it's got got issues so is that it'd be seeing things like that happening already in the in sort of materials for fire safety or is that a potential that you think could come up?
00:20:25
Speaker
i I do think we need to be careful on this one because historically, there's always they've always been problematic materials. um you know Building surveyors get excited and about them. And combustible insulation, combustible external wall materials is is the big one at the at the moment. But it hasn't it's not the only one that there there's ever been. And what what I think that we do need to be careful about is as we're addressing fire safety concerns we're not introducing other problems and creating problems for the future and I think we just need to be mindful of that and probably a good example of that um and again I probably need to be careful with this one because there are advocates of this material but
00:21:10
Speaker
what one that has come under scrutiny is magnesium oxide boards, which turns out that those are they're not they're completely non-combustible and are used as a lining board. So great, being really, but really attractive in terms of building non-combustible external wall systems, but they're hygroscopic, which means that they absorb moisture.
00:21:33
Speaker
the thing that they then do as ah at a later date is then release that moisture, which can then, in in in quite large quantities, potentially depending on the the environment um that they're in, um and that can then lead to a real problem with damaging, let's say a timber frame, damaging plasterboard, causing corrosion to metal components in the external walls. And and it can actually be quite um ah disruptive to actually then fix that problem. How do you get rid of it if you've if you've then basically built the building and the external walls out of it?
00:22:11
Speaker
But they'll there'll be there'll be other examples as well. you know Just general quality of workmanship, that that's that's something that I've seen a lot of recently. you know We're quickly trying to remedy um all of the cutting fire safety problems.
00:22:24
Speaker
and then you know external wall systems are being put up pretty quickly. um Modern systems are often you know ones that click into place. So it's about the quality of of of those systems. So they secure our panels, rain screen panels. you We see a lot of rain screen systems in place now.
00:22:44
Speaker
Are they secure? it Are any of them going to come off? you know And and you know there have been some sort of tragic instances of that. So yeah, really good point, I think, that yes, we we need to address fire safety and we're doing a good job. But you know there's always an eye on potential other issues that maybe we're introducing or we're not we're not focusing on.
00:23:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah yeah, I mean, that's a fascinating point because it's it ties back in again to why things might take time to to resolve on the basis that ah you're trying to avoid unintended consequences. There's many, many factors to to consider. And yeah, as you say, what whilst on the face face of things, that ah that material solves that the combustion issue. Actually, what we need to check before yeah we rush into things and and cover every building in something else, it doesn't introduce something else. And you can see that even with wildlife projects, you know, we introduced one time around the morning, it's wiped out everything else and yeah the unintended consequence of of doing something. Absolutely. It just adds again to the complexity of the whole of the whole thing. Yeah, for sure.
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
00:23:49
Speaker
Thank you very, very much for coming on today. It's been really interesting covering all the different bits and it's a lot more detailed than ah than I initially imagined. Thanks for covering it all. You're welcome. Thanks, Matt.
00:24:00
Speaker
No problem. event If anyone wants to get in touch with with you or or TFT to to learn a bit more, yeah learn about your services, how how do they get in touch? Please do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you can go on the website. go go to There's a route there for inquiries or queries, um but more than happy for anyone to contact me directly as well, and my my details are on the website, so just lift me up.
00:24:26
Speaker
Awesome. so But yeah, thanks again for coming on and potentially we' we'll catch up again in the future and see how things have changed post ah but the yeah know the recent events. That'd be great. Lovely speaking. Thanks, Matt. Cheers.