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BRE risked allowing inaccurate test reports, manager admits
The Building Research Establishment (BRE) risked producing inaccurate product test reports by allowing drawings to be submitted after rigs were built, an employee has said.
At the Grenfell Tower Inquiry today Tony Baker, the former project manager for large scale testing at the BRE, said that the testing house would sometimes accept technical drawings of proposed tests after they had been constructed, leaving the process open to inaccurate reports.
“There has always been a practice of requesting drawings from clients, unfortunately it has not always been the case that we’ve always receive those drawings in time for the installation to take place,” he said. He admitted that on these occasions the BRE allowed for rigs to be constructed regardless.
Counsel to the inquiry, Kate Grange, asked: “Do you accept that not requiring drawings in advance gives rise to an obvious risk of the system being misdescribed, either accidentally or deliberately, in the test report?”
“Yes, there is a potential risk there,” Mr Baker responded.
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The evidence comes as the inquiry has sought to understand how fire-resisting magnesium oxide boards found their way onto a Celotex rig in 2014, without the knowledge of the BRE.
The inquiry was shown a draft test report of the Celotex RS5000 product, eventually used on Grenfell Tower, which included pictures of the test rig with materials of two different colours and of the magnesium oxide boards behind the cladding.
In the copy that Mr Baker received, he failed to check in detail why there were two different types of board despite having annotated the relevant picture.
He explained: “I think I asked Phil [Clark] verbally at the earlier stage why they were different colours and I am fairly sure it was related to this test report. But I have commented verbally regarding the different colours and Phil told me it is because that was all that was available in the thickness.”
But Mr Baker admitted it was an oversight on his part not to check the relevant product delivery notes to satisfy himself that the boards were not materially different.
“The fact that this report had already been through a number of iterations, I had clearly incorrectly made the assumption that it was a fairly accurate description and I checked it maybe too casually in this respect,” he said.
Ms Grange asked if Mr Baker’s failure to check the delivery notes against the components listed in the test report was a “very basic error”, Mr Baker said: “In hindsight, yes.”
Mr Baker’s senior colleague, Stephen Howard, who gave evidence earlier in the week, also missed the different coloured panels and the magnesium oxide boards in the test report, saying that he expected these issues to be picked up as the report was redrafted multiple times.
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