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THE CHANGING FACE OF CONSTRUCTION PRODUCT CERTIFICATION ROUND TABLE REVIEW
ELUSIVE CULTURE CHANGE Several delegates (such as ex-Chief Construction Advisor Paul Morrell, extreme left of pic), believed that a change of culture to a more robust certifi cation processes was unlikely Nev Grunwald had criticism for manufacturers “in the middle”
who “are not bothering,” regarding a change of culture to more rigour in product certifi cation and testing – he commented: “we have let them get by for decades; we come up with another initiative and they say, ‘we’ve heard all this before.’” He added: “But it’s the law, it has to change – contractors of every size have to stand fi rm.” Amanda Long summed up the ‘culture problem’ in construction,
saying: “The fundamentals of the culture change are about accountability, transparency, and responsibility. There are other sectors that embrace those more readily than this one does.” She added that on the client side, while there was evidence that some clients “haven’t taken the time to understand and buy into the responsibilities they now have,” the CCPI offered clients a “demand side pledge,” enabling them to “show leadership and drive change.” Peter Caplehorn suggested there were dangers to using prequalifi cations for project bids to ensure competencies and compliance under the new regime, warning that “people don’t fully understand the principles of the BSA,” including architects. Amanda Long concurred: “We have to be very careful that we don’t use things like ‘prequal’ to just assume that we can just tick that box.” Grunwald however said while prequalifi cation was not the ideal route, it was a “good starter for 10” as a systematic route to change, as opposed to standards and competence being “driven by volunteers.” Long countered that there was a risk that ‘prequal’ “could be misunderstood as the ‘be-all and end-all.’”
Unsafe defi nitions
Paul Morrell offered a fairly damning critique of current and previous Governments’ responses to the issue of testing credibility, saying “most of the questions in the review still haven’t been answered, but without them you can’t make all the other decisions.” He said the industry, pre-Grenfell, had been “trading on good luck.” Morrell also said the notion of contractual ‘safety’ was problematic and subjective, meaning “there’s no duty to design or build a ‘safe’ building, you design a ‘compliant’ building.” In terms
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of manufacturers, “if you’re going to make them responsible for designing a safe product, but nobody’s responsible for designing a safe building, you’re going to make them the scapegoats.” Consultant Chris Gaze said the lack of degrees of meaning within the word ‘safe’ were a “big problem; I end up having to say ‘how safe,’ at which point I’m in the world of compliance. I want to comply with maximum diligence, but don’t ask me to be safe when I don’t know what safe is, and when we’re so bad at judging risk and uncertainty.” Gabriel Pierazzini countered that “there must be an agreed defi nition of what is safe.” Mark Taylor added that when discussing fi re, Government guidance relies on three adjectives for compliance: “adequate,’ ‘reasonable,’ and ‘appropriate’; that leaves a void when things go wrong: how would the courts interpret them?’”
The Regulator’s reach
The group discussed the new national products regulator set up within the OPSS, including its current and future scope. Peter Caplehorn was positive, saying he thought they had “done a great job building their capability and capacity so far,” and hoped “they would get full support going forward.” He said they had already made “a few interventions, which has in the main been good for the industry.” Tony Ryan, chief technical offi cer at co-sponsor of the event Siderise, expressed support for the approach being taken by the new regulator for “not reinventing the wheel,” and praised their engagement with the industry. Amanda Long echoed his words, saying that the regulator had been “very good” at engaging with CCPI, and praised the regulator’s “product information management,” and “behaviours in relation to products they’ve assessed, and how they’ve applied those behaviours across other products.” Despite Ryan’s plaudits for the OPSS based on experience thus
far, he cautioned that “manufacturers who are proactive and who stay ahead of the game embrace third party certifi cation, and are already under continuous surveillance.”
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