Grenfell Tower Fire

Personally I agree with the suggestions above that I'm not sure debating the technical specifics of this is terribly useful - this is undoubtedly a complex problem, and the only people who will actually have access to all the info will be involved with the enquiry and couldn't (or shouldn't or won't) comment. Unfortunately when the enquiry results come out, which is when we could and should look at lessons learnt for our professional fields, the impetus to discuss it tends to have disappeared. So I can think of a couple of points from this:

1. What can we as an IET community do to promote discussions on lessons learnt when detail information on major engineering (in the broadest sense) failures becomes available - maybe 2-3 years after the headlines?

• How can we persuade "the public" (whatever that means) and the media that events such as this are very complex and need a detailed investigation down to true root causes - and that in the end there may be no-one to blame (but they can be stopped from happening again which to my mind is more important)?

There does seem to be a huge movement in the UK (and the US) at the moment - in all sorts of areas - to suggest that approaching problems thoroughly and steadily is "whitewashing" or "brushing under the carpet", a sort of lynch mob mentality (I'm not suggesting anyone here is doing it by the way!). I have no idea how we counter this but I think it's vital that it is countered. 


Sorry, I don't like being a wet blanket on discussions...but actually I think as engineers we should feel confident when we start getting dragged into pub conversations on issues like this (as I am sure many of us have after Grenfell) to quote Sherlock Holmes "it is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data". Might not help the reputation of engineers as being boring though...and maybe not those actual words!


(P.S. I do have my own ideas as to what we can technically, legisilatively and politically learn from this, but since they're only based on newspaper reports, which will be selective at best, I'll keep them to myself )


Cheers, Andy

Personally I agree with the suggestions above that I'm not sure debating the technical specifics of this is terribly useful - this is undoubtedly a complex problem, and the only people who will actually have access to all the info will be involved with the enquiry and couldn't (or shouldn't or won't) comment. Unfortunately when the enquiry results come out, which is when we could and should look at lessons learnt for our professional fields, the impetus to discuss it tends to have disappeared. So I can think of a couple of points from this:

1. What can we as an IET community do to promote discussions on lessons learnt when detail information on major engineering (in the broadest sense) failures becomes available - maybe 2-3 years after the headlines?

• How can we persuade "the public" (whatever that means) and the media that events such as this are very complex and need a detailed investigation down to true root causes - and that in the end there may be no-one to blame (but they can be stopped from happening again which to my mind is more important)?

There does seem to be a huge movement in the UK (and the US) at the moment - in all sorts of areas - to suggest that approaching problems thoroughly and steadily is "whitewashing" or "brushing under the carpet", a sort of lynch mob mentality (I'm not suggesting anyone here is doing it by the way!). I have no idea how we counter this but I think it's vital that it is countered. 


Sorry, I don't like being a wet blanket on discussions...but actually I think as engineers we should feel confident when we start getting dragged into pub conversations on issues like this (as I am sure many of us have after Grenfell) to quote Sherlock Holmes "it is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data". Might not help the reputation of engineers as being boring though...and maybe not those actual words!


(P.S. I do have my own ideas as to what we can technically, legisilatively and politically learn from this, but since they're only based on newspaper reports, which will be selective at best, I'll keep them to myself )


Cheers, Andy