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Engineer provided ‘substantially wrong’ advice on need to assess cavity barriers in fire strategy, says Grenfell Inquiry expert
The fire engineer responsible for providing advice on fire safety during the Grenfell Tower refurbishment provided “substantially wrong” advice to architects regarding cavity barriers, an expert witness has said.
The inquiry today heard evidence from Dr Barbara Lane, the inquiry’s fire safety expert, who looked at the fire safety advice given during the Grenfell refurbishment and the information passed on following the completion of the work.
Reflecting on an exchange of emails between architects Studio E and Exova engineer Terry Ashton, Ms Lane said that Mr Ashton provided “substantially wrong advice” when he said the cavity barriers should not form part of the original fire strategy.
In the email sent in September 2014, Neil Crawford, an architect at Studio E, asked Mr Ashton why the issue of whether to install cavity barriers or firestops behind the buildings cladding was causing so much confusion within the project team, adding that it did not seem to be included in Exova’s fire strategy.
In response, Mr Ashton said: “This isn’t something that would necessarily form a part of a fire safety strategy for a building. Therefore, it would not have been dealt with in the fire strategy for this building. I believe that a cavity barrier is all that is required.”
In her report Dr Lane called this piece of advice “substantially wrong” and said that information about cavity barriers and insulation should have been essential parts of the fire strategy report.
Explaining her comments, she said: “I think this correspondence shows exactly the problem of the fire safety engineer not making clear minimum requirements. Another year has passed and the design team is still confused.
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“Everyone’s trying to resolve the confusion, and again, the project needs a competent person with experience of fire safety legislation, fire safety engineering legislation, and behaviour of materials to give that team some advice.”
When asked whether these questions about cavity barriers should have been answered in Exova’s original fire safety strategy, Dr Lane said yes.
The comments came as part of a list of criticisms levelled at Exova relating to the checks the firm carried out during the refurbishment.
These included criticisms of Mr Ashton’s reluctance to raise questions on the materials being used on the external walls of Grenfell Tower.
Referencing emails on 18 September 2014 between Mr Ashton and the project team, discussing whether the materials being used were combustible and what type of cavity barriers were needed in the external wall, Dr Lane said: “The insulation is non-compliant, the cavity barriers are not compliant, it is absolutely time to ask how the external wall is assessed.”
Exova has previously said that it will have the opportunity to respond to Dr Lane’s report in submissions to the inquiry in May 2021, when all evidence from the first three modules have been submitted.
However, Exova has said that its report that was submitted at an early stage of the project made clear that the question of external fire spread was subject to analysis in a further report and that responsibility was transferred to Rydon, which oversaw the choice of cladding.
Later during her evidence, Dr Lane was asked by Kate Grange, counsel to the inquiry, what her response would be to the assertion that the benchmark for which she was measuring Exova’s performance was “gold standard” and not practical for fire safety engineers working in the field.
Dr Lane said: “I would say, ‘how rude’, and then I would ask what is ‘gold standard’. The only benchmark I have used in this work is all of the published guidance and absolutely nothing else.
“If I was to draw anything else, I think my report would be classified as even more critical than it has been.
“So I have expressly and deliberately relied on published guidance docs and referred to them every time. And if there are people who think that is gold standard, well shame on them.”
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