10 CONFERENCE REPORT: UK CONSTRUCTION WEEK


‘Quality in Construction Post-Grenfell’


Housebuilder & Developer’s Jack Wooler reports on the key sessions from the industry’s leading event


A group of industry experts met at UK Construction Week in October to discuss how to address quality in construction after the fire at Grenfell Tower.


The panel included Peter Caplehorn, deputy chief executive and policy director at the Construction Products Association (CPA); Geoff Wilkinson, managing director at Wilkinson Construction Consultants Limited; Anne Power, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics (LSE); Claire Curtis-Thomas, CEO at the British Board of Agreement (BBA); and a representative from The Fire Protection Association (Neil Cheyne / Howard Passey? - Jonathan wasn’t there, could put ‘a representative’).


Caplehorn said that while everyone in the industry was “appalled” after the event, up until the incident, the Government were arguing that Building Regulations were just ‘red tape’. “We are just about getting to the end of discovering how big the problem is,” Caplehorn said, adding: “Now, we need to move forward.” According to Geoff Wilkinson, of


Wilkinson Construction Consultants, the issue is that the industry “all need to work together,” which he says is why events such as UK Construction Week are “so important.” He continued: “This is not just about cladding, it’s about the way the industry operates.”


LSE professor Anne Power told the audience that in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, corners were cut in order to reduce the council’s bill, along with unqual- ified people being hired and elements of fire safety such as emergency landings left unchecked. She believes there needs to be onsite supervision for everything necessary to keep a building safe. According to Power, the industry has failed to treat multi-storey residential blocks differently to the way we treat houses. However, BBA CEO Claire Curtis- Thomas asked, “Where is the money going to come from?” She referred not only to buildings with flammable cladding, but the “thousands of buildings at risk” besides those. “You all painted quite a bleak picture,” said session chair Steph McGovern, then asking the panel, “where do we go from here?” In response, Caplehorn said the industry


has been in “free-fall” since Grenfell. He believes it’s “not right to say nothing’s happened;” things are in motion, though perhaps not as quickly as they should be. He cited the need for culture change in the industry and “some sort of outside enforcement,” perhaps shifting towards a rating system which would be more akin to that in the food industry. Curtis-Thomas concluded: “We all want


to do the right thing, but it comes down to money.” When an audience member asked if perhaps educating tenants on the conse- quences of the safety hazards so that they may act themselves, Power said that the inhabitants of Grenfell Tower had been speaking out about the dangers of their building for years, but “nobody listened.”


Greenspec’s Patience, on the impact of modern construction materials


The world is running short of many construction materials we take for granted, and an energy efficient circular economy is vital to a sustainable future, that was the view of Sandy Patience of Greenspec at UK Construction Week. Speaking at Surface & Materials Hub,


Patience told the audience of the many shortages the world is experiencing, from rare earth elements to helium, and water. Patience spoke of the lack of efficiency


in many of the products often used in construction, such as bricks, concrete, steel and aluminium, which all take up a great deal of energy to produce, and are currently reliant on fossil fuels. Timber however, takes up much less


energy, Patience told the audience, and is far more carbon efficient. He listed many low-impact, low power materials that he believes the industry should adopt, including CLT, foam glass insulation, recycled plastic products, recycled cellu- lose insulation, lime mortar, cork insulation, clay blocks, timber windows, and wood fibre insulation. Besides the carbon issues, he also


discussed the effect of both procuring some of the these products, and disposing of them. There are huge levels of landfill in construction waste, and the production and extraction of the materials can cause ‘catastrophic’ consequences to animal habitats and lives, as well as those of the humans living near or working in these environments. Along with this, he criticised a lack


of care given towards the thousands of new compounds made every year, with very little research into their carcinogenic effects. Frequently, but slowly, he said, we are finding out that these new compounds can come with dire consequences. Compounds such as asbestos, chlorine and formaldehyde have more famously been known to cause issues, but Patience added that even a widely used material such as PVC is a compound of the known human carcinogen vinyl chloride (VC).


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