A wonderful comment has just been made in the Grenfell inquiry about fire risk assessment.

I haven’t viewed the piece but will do this evening. It’s not only competence that is the issue, due diligence seems to be left in the wake of tick box competence. 
A nursing home here was recently served with a prohibition order. It followed a flood in the upper floor due to a burst pipe. The home nursing officer noticed that the water ran down unabated to the lower floor via all sorts of apertures and was rightly concerned that if water could do this then so could smoke. An investigation by a specialist fire-stop company revealed a myriad of breaches in compartmentation and fire stopping between floors and escape routes. So bad was it that the nursing officer informed NIFRS who immediately served a prohibition notice which meant that the residents had to be removed to another facility. 
This was a purpose-built nursing home in 2008, achieved full Building Control approval on completion, was signed off as compliant by all service contractors, had no less than four Fire Risk Assessments, three by separate, fully accredited Fire Risk Assessment specialist companies, all reporting a tolerable outcome, and visited on several previous occasions by NIFRS themselves! 
I have no doubt that all involved would have been deemed competent by any metric but they failed miserably in the exercising of due diligence!

I haven’t viewed the piece but will do this evening. It’s not only competence that is the issue, due diligence seems to be left in the wake of tick box competence. 
A nursing home here was recently served with a prohibition order. It followed a flood in the upper floor due to a burst pipe. The home nursing officer noticed that the water ran down unabated to the lower floor via all sorts of apertures and was rightly concerned that if water could do this then so could smoke. An investigation by a specialist fire-stop company revealed a myriad of breaches in compartmentation and fire stopping between floors and escape routes. So bad was it that the nursing officer informed NIFRS who immediately served a prohibition notice which meant that the residents had to be removed to another facility. 
This was a purpose-built nursing home in 2008, achieved full Building Control approval on completion, was signed off as compliant by all service contractors, had no less than four Fire Risk Assessments, three by separate, fully accredited Fire Risk Assessment specialist companies, all reporting a tolerable outcome, and visited on several previous occasions by NIFRS themselves! 
I have no doubt that all involved would have been deemed competent by any metric but they failed miserably in the exercising of due diligence!