FOCUS
Cover all bases According to Nick Jenkins, the cladding
industry needs to stop second guessing fire performance and take responsibility by acting on test evidence and ensuring compliance
L
ONG BEFORE the horrors of Grenfell Tower unfolded, questions had been raised about the building regulation compliance and fire safety of buildings over 18m tall with rainscreen cladding systems. One year on from the disaster, there are still major concerns about how the industry is handling fire performance and compliance. The Grenfell fire highlighted many
things to all of us, including the difficulty of predicting how fi re will behave. Its speed and ferocity shocked even the most experienced fi refi ghters and safety experts. You cannot second guess fire and there are so many different factors that can affect how it behaves. It may seem obvious, but unfortunately that is a lesson still to be learned in the cladding industry as a whole, where there are legitimate concerns that Approved Document B (ADB) guidance has not always been properly followed on construction sites. This is despite evidence that certain multi layered wall assemblies currently
48 JUNE 2018
www.frmjournal.com
being constructed, whilst in some instances conforming to ADB guidance, do not perform well with respect to their resistance to spread of fire when tested. Most concerns stem from the vastly
different performances witnessed from the different brands of aluminium composite material (ACM) available that claim to meet the same EN 13501-1/2.
Types of ACM
ACM is a type of cladding material commonly used on public buildings such as schools and hospitals, as well as social housing. There are generally three types of ACM available in the industry, each with different levels of fire performance influenced by the nature of the coated aluminium outer layers, the core material, and the way the core is bonded or fused to the coated aluminium. We now know that the type of core material – and how it is fused to the aluminium outer layers – is the primary determinant of the complete ACM’s fi re performance.
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