The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire was the deadliest residential fire in the United Kingdom since the World War II bombings. The final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, released in September of 2024, detailed the results a 7-year comprehensive investigation hoping to answer the question: "How was it possible in 21st-century London for a reinforced concrete building, itself structurally impervious to fire, to be turned into a death trap?"
On Friday, March 28, 2025, at CSI's North Central Region Conference in Omaha, Nebraska, I'll present a program that reviews inquiry's investigations, its findings, and its significant recommendations. The tragedy resulted from a long chain of errors, carelessness, incompetence, and what one expert called a "culture of non-compliance" with fire safety rules. In some cases, this resulted from an inexplicable ignorance of building regulations by design professionals. There was a widespread failure among all parties to take responsibility for important aspects of the work that affected fire safety. Most alarmingly, the inquiry discovered evidence of dishonesty and fraud involving corporations who manufactured the building products, and the testing agencies charged with certifying their compliance.
My interest in this topic started shortly after the fire itself, when like many of my colleagues, I wondered how highly flammable polyethylene (PE) core aluminum composite material (ACM) panels had been permitted on a relatively recent project (construction of the exterior recladding had wrapped up a year before the fire) when we had long been aware of the dangers of using similar plastics on building exteriors. Ignoring the sage advice that it is unwise to jump to judgements on disasters before all the evidence is available, I posted an article to our chapter website mainly focused on the trust relationships between designers and product representatives. [Find the original article HERE]
Some of the assumptions in that original article proved to be untrue, such as that local codes allowed the use of PE core ACM. Existing codes in the UK were in a muddled state, responding to a governmental push to streamline regulations while an ongoing effort was being made to align them with EU standards. The various test standards and methods for achieving compliance were inconsistent or contradictory. As a result, most of the parties involved in the project were unclear about what it was the codes were requiring, and everybody in a position of responsibility looked to someone else to determine whether the product was allowed.
The article also speculated, "It could be that the architect correctly designed the recladding of the residential block based on an understanding of the relevant codes and the information provided by the manufacturer. It is likely the contractor installed the work exactly as detailed and specified. Maybe none of the entities involved with the project did anything wrong – they may have been following code and well-accepted business practice for their locality." All of this was at best, overly generous of knowledge base of the parties mentioned, and at worst, overtly incorrect about their competence. The events leading up to the horrific Grenfell Tower tragedy were chain of errors made up of everything from minor mistake to major fraud. The only innocent parties turned out to be the victims themselves.
I hope you can join me in Omaha on May 28, or if not, back here in St. Louis in the fall when we'll repeat my presentation at one of our chapter meetings.
------------------------------
George Everding FCSI, CCS, CCCA, AIA, SCIP
Program Committee Chair
Greater Saint Louis Chapter
314-517-7800
------------------------------