Hello John:

I have been waiting years for this report to be issued.

I plan to download the full report to see it it answers all my questions- for example why there was no water in the risers or why it took so long to turn off the gas supply to the building.

Now it has been issued, how long before the police start arresting people?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida 

I fear it wont  be so clear cut. I appreciate the distress of the bereaved drives a desire that 'someone must pay for this' but (and by all means call me cynical) I think nearly everyone in the chain will be able to say, quite sensibly, that they personally took reasonable steps given the limits of their role and responsibility - firemen trained on similar buildings, stay put worked before, and probably were not told that cladding would affect things as much as it did. Builders did as they were told, councillors consulted policy documents, architects looked at maker's data sheets etc.
But of course no-one actually 'did' anything practical.  Actually the cheapest garden bonfire test with a bit of the cladding shows the issue - but was never the job of any of the huge no of desk pilots in the chain of decision to set fire to a small piece in the  office waste paper bin. In fact if they did they'd probably be fired, so they didn't.
Such R and D lab behaviour is not encouraged !

What is needed is not more layers of folk subcontracting and charging a fee but a shorter chain of responsibility, and the ability to do, nay demand,  practical tests of unknown combinations of materials.
I'm not holding my breath....
Mike

I disagree Mike

Read the commentary on the tests performed by the BRE on the cladding materials and the reports view of the BRE due diligence and how the manufactures influenced the tests and their marketing material.  The response of one manufacturers manager to being told the test of the materials had failed and what she wrote in the margin of an email. She was asked in her evidence what the meaning of WTF in cross examination.

So need for bonfire tests as the BRE were tasked to perform the tests.

JP

Are private individuals in their own home less valued than people in a workplace?

I suspect it's more to do with homeowners are typically voters, and voter's don't tend not to vote for people who try to tell them what to do in their own home (and with their own money).  So things like safety improvements tend not to be retrospective for owner occupiers, but at best get slipped in during new work. In a workplace, it's (mostly) not the voter that pays (lots of voter workers who benefit, only one voting boss that pays) so it tends to be easier to force through costly changes. Rented homes are a bit in the middle - while it may look like the landlord pays, costs inevitable end up being added to the rent.

   - Andy.

She was asked in her evidence what the meaning of WTF in cross examination.

and it is just that sort of ignorance, among the bureaucratic class, of these sort of specialist techniques and terminology, that allows this sort of issue to occur. I'm pretty sure everyone in the lab where I work knows what it means. (!)

But dark humour aside, that incident specifically - the testing of Celotex in the wrong layer stack (with an Mg O barrier) compared to how it was actually being used (without that non-combustible barrier) may be one of the closest we see to at least corporate responsibility.
It does look like pretty solidly like tricking the test sample to get a pass which would otherwise be a fail. And would not happen if it was not the company itself preparing the test sample and results and test method being seen as "commercial in confidence" information.
I still fear though that even if anyone gets fined or jailed, even for that, it will not be those truly responsible for making it happen.
Mike

Hello Mike:

Something else happened this week that gives me hope that the police will now take action.

It was reported that the German trial of Martin Winterhorn Ex-Volkswagen boss had started this week.

He was a key actor in the 2015 Dieselgate scandal.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL 

Well, he was CEO of Volkswagen at the time the cars with the test detecting software were being made and sold - from 2008 in the UK actually so a link may be easier to prove. Not sure how much software he personally wrote, or encouraged others to write, or which project managers thought it was a reasonable interpretation of the rules and how much that was known in the higher levels of the beaurocracy.. Its German law, so we will all find out in due course. It is worth noting that Rupert Stadler - the Audi man-  pleaded guilty to personal responsibility for not stopping sales once the software was known about and was fined a touch over a million euros and given a 21 month suspended sentence.

I agree, we'll see.
Mike.

Hello Mike:

If and when the Police start their legal actions, will the IET determine if any of it's members are involved?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay  

Hello Mike:

I sometimes wish that Albert Pierrepoint was still around to provide final Justice.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

You do have to be very sure if you have  a death penalty. There have been a great many cases where later we decided that the guilty person wasn't after all.
Mike.

Witch hunts for someone to blame is just a way of the government to avoid doing anything because they can say they are waiting for the police to investigate.

Their hope is some company will plead guilty and go bankrupt while paying some compensation to those who lost relatives.

BUT, What to do with buildings over 12 floors that have this flammable cladding still needs to be sorted? 

Make the company that installed it remove it within 1 year is an option.

If they go broke jail the chief exec  and call in the army to finish the job.

We cannot keep on prevaricating for ever over a stupid mistake.

Another stupid mistake was removing flame proof asbestos cement from high rise buildings and replacing it with flammable plastics.  No wonder the inside catches fire easily as well. 

Witch hunts for someone to blame is just a way of the government to avoid doing anything because they can say they are waiting for the police to investigate.

Their hope is some company will plead guilty and go bankrupt while paying some compensation to those who lost relatives.

BUT, What to do with buildings over 12 floors that have this flammable cladding still needs to be sorted? 

Make the company that installed it remove it within 1 year is an option.

If they go broke jail the chief exec  and call in the army to finish the job.

We cannot keep on prevaricating for ever over a stupid mistake.

Another stupid mistake was removing flame proof asbestos cement from high rise buildings and replacing it with flammable plastics.  No wonder the inside catches fire easily as well. 

CliveS said:

We cannot keep on prevaricating for ever over a stupid mistake.

What makes you think any of this was a mistake?  Whether it's building materials companies claiming their products were more fire resistant than they really were, or council officials who went for the cheapest option and didn't care about the safety implications.  It was all deliberate.