Behind The Built Environment Episode 28

Barbara: So I was going to say, I hope you're fighting fit after lunch, but I can hear that you are, and I encourage you to ask me whatever you like when the talk is over. It'll last about 25 minutes, and unless there's some, you know, terrible thing that might happen if I answer your question, I will try to answer it.

Okay. Thank you. Now, first of all, I just absolutely love this conference theme, okay, because sometimes the conference theme doesn't really do much for you, but it's raising standards, proving competence, with a clearly targeted outcome of delivering better buildings. How simple, how inspiring, how pertinent, okay. The emerging concept of thinking beyond minimum requirements In a way, I'm not sure I'm in on that bus just yet, that we're talking about going beyond minimum requirements, but I'm going to try and set out a few ideas there too.

And then the pursuit of true excellence in the built environment, you can count me in. Okay, now before I introduce myself in the context of my experience, not like my views on everything, and the agenda for my presentation, I did want to give a very short statement about why I always end up talking about the public and safety before I start rattling on about everything else.

So my talk today to you is framed by 2 important constructs, if you will. So the new regime in which we're all operating, 3 or so more years, and the stark fact that it will be 10 years to the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire soon. And yet tens of thousands of people remain in unsafe homes.

Okay, the— that this amount of time has passed, it certainly frightens me anyway. I don't know if it's just me, but it's a huge amount of time and it's gone horribly quickly. I wanted to emphasise that the Building Safety Act is something called a UK Public General Act, and I actually never knew that before.

Okay, and it contains provisions about the safety of people in or about buildings and the standard of buildings. Okay, nice, that's clear. It supplements and strengthens a much older piece of legislation. If you're into reading legislation like me, you'll know what I mean already. If you don't, don't worry, it's the Building Act 1984, and that Act, which was around before the fire and remains the Act today, nothing has changed.

Okay, addresses securing health, safety, welfare, and convenience of persons in or about buildings and others who may be affected by buildings or matters connected with buildings. And I promise you I won't say that again. The Building Safety Act sets out extra procedures for higher-risk buildings, but it encompasses the safety of all buildings.

And in general, this relatively new Act can be described as aiming to restore trust in the construction regulatory regime. Now, lots of the processes and procedures and documentation now required in design, construction and occupation, in proving competency, they're all required under the Act, but it is my strongly held view that they are not new at all.

Okay, but the Act causes greater oversight and drives greater imperative for everyone to comply, and this is no small ask, as we know. I attended the launch of something called the Compliance Plan Approach in Scotland last week, and I was struck by their focus on the public interest and why taking the new regulations and compliance with the new regulations seriously, you know, seriously is so important.

Their case is that since one of the prime reasons of the Act is securing the health, safety and welfare, yada, yada, yada, transparency is in the public interest, as is minimising the occurrence of non-compliance with the building regulations. So all activities to bring a compliant design through to a well-controlled worksite, to a compliant handover, increases the likelihood of delivering a compliant building, and providing a transparent evidence trail to support this is all in the public interest.

So all of this allows me to conclude, in order to frame my presentation to you today, that our duty is very clear, which is to secure the safety of people for the UK public in all buildings we work on in any capacity. We comply with all relevant requirements to do that, and we provide transparent evidence of that compliance in the public interest, and we secure the public trust by minimising the occurrence of non-compliance with building regs.

So the talk— I'm going to just give you a short introduction Then I want to talk about systemic industry challenges and the public trust problem. Just to remind us, it's not just the cladding, though that's still talked about so much. The whole building lifecycle matters. What do we mean by ethical practice? Why does that matter?

Also, I wanted to throw in everything keeps changing. I really feel like that at the moment. So many things keep changing. Let's talk about that. And to end, it's everyone, it's not just some people, it's everyone needs to participate. So by the end, I may have convinced you that siloed behaviours, siloed compliance planning, siloed compliance activity cannot create the safety standards in the built environment the public needs.

Okay. So I've spent 30 years working in a multidisciplinary technical consulting firm, and some of you may laugh, but I do still have to justify that I have been doing some work for the last 30 years. So I just cut that off at the chase now and tell you about it at the beginning.

Okay. And I always like to say the first third of my career was what I call my nice, lovely, happy design times. I was mostly in the office, I was doing numerical analysis, I had lots of academic theories, and I was focused on pushing the boundaries of engineered solutions. And I do have to admit I was very happy then.

The middle 10 years were different because now I was getting commissions with, you know, large teams also to do site-based compliance activities, including many, many, many weeks of night shifts running commissioning series, proving the integrated performance of active and passive systems for overall final fire strategy compliance. Because I don't believe a fire strategy is a document.

I believe the fire strategy is how the building performs in the end when all the work is done. It's very, very detailed work and lots and lots of work by very many people is needed to make sure that is what happens in the end. This middle third was also a time, contrary to popular post-Grenfell view, that there were major defective building claims up and down the country.

On cladding and on lots of other things. So there were, before the fire, lots of large teams doing inspection and testing of buildings, their systems, looking for records, not finding very much, particularly from construction that was compliant, and then into the maintenance section, not finding much compliance there. Then the last part of my career, the last 10 years, I spent 8 years working full-time as an expert to the Grenfell Inquiry, and it was my task to look at design, construction, management and maintenance, and all the relevant duties throughout that whole cycle, okay, not just the cladding.

And now I have a role, it's called being an independent chair of something called the Building Advisory Committee. We will be advertising for all different types of people soon, and we will communicate that to you. It is what's called a statutory committee, so we have a legal duty to provide evidence-based advice and information to the regulator and beyond before they make changes to regulation, and in giving them feedback to what is happening out on the ground, so the impact on industry, okay?

And always that advice and information has to be from an independent perspective. So this new role, I'm new in the game, it is tricky, I have to say, but it's given me a new perspective on this whole system we work in. And it's absolutely clear to me that it's important to ground policymaking in sound and deep understanding of the realities of working and the realities of procurement practices, because ultimately they actually control our ability to drive safe outcomes.

The public has, in my opinion, the right to strong expectations of ethical practice from everyone contributing to the creation of the built environment. However, the Grenfell fire has had a profound effect on how the public perceive the construction industry, not just because of the night, but what was unveiled after the fire. Many of you will also have your own experiences from your own work on maybe items that concern you even to this day.

Now, since the Grenfell fire, the scale of defective buildings in England continues to be revealed, and as far as I'm concerned, the figures are staggering. Okay, in August this year, MHCLG are reporting on 4,724 buildings 11 metres and over. Developers who've committed to remediate— there are 2,679 such buildings. So anyone who tells you Grenfell was a one-off, because lots of people like to say that to me, and then they say the new regime is an overcorrection, which lots of people like to harass me about, I say feel free to challenge them looking at these facts.

So the Grenfell fire has in fact caused the unveiling of a systemic problem that's also evidenced in schools and in hospitals throughout the UK. And it's important to remember it's a systemic issue when we feel that things are very difficult, or it can be hard to remember why we're having to get involved in all of this in the first place.

It unveiled industry failings and how we practice, how we see projects through to construction and completion, and that we don't really consider how we impact people by our work. The night of the fire, 72 people lost their lives, and each one in terrible circumstances. Mostly those living in or who went up to the highest floors, but also vulnerable people.

And by this I mean people made vulnerable by fire because they cannot evacuate independently down a staircase, and I'm going to come back to that later. When I meet bereaved and survivors now, I have to accept nothing will ever be the same for them again. I find that distressing, personally, and also I think it's distressing our industry is responsible for that because that's the opposite of what we're meant to be trying to achieve.

So we have to accept that it has all had a profound effect on how the public perceive our industry, and I consider that to be unacceptable. There was another fire recently. I don't know if you're aware that building was waiting to be remediated. Lots of people were arguing, so it hadn't been. It wasn't safe for the safe stay-put strategy.

They put in an alarm which apparently didn't work, and yet again there were scenes of chaos during a dark evacuation and people carrying family members down the stairs. So the post-Grenfell system, okay, there are some questions to be answered there. This is why for many bereaved and survivors the criminal work has become such a focal point.

For all of us, you know, in this room and beyond, I feel this may have yet another substantial impact on us as a sector and potentially on further future changes to our regulatory system. You will know that 54 individuals, 20 organisations are suspects, everything from health and safety to fraud to misconduct in public office.

I hate, like, saying that out loud, I have to say. Because if that goes to trial in 2029, how will our sector be viewed, you know, as all of that is unveiled in the public? So this conference asks us to think beyond minimum requirements and pursue true excellence across the built environment. In presentations I give at the moment, I like to focus in on Grenfell Tower for a short period.

You may wish I wouldn't, but I feel obliged to do so every time I'm in public. And I think the first thing I want to say, it really was just not the cladding, okay? We know the fire started at level 4, and by the time the brigade got there promptly, the fire was already in the cladding.

So that was in less than 15 minutes, and within half an hour was up at the top of the building. We know by 45 minutes after the first 999 call, it had spread around the crown of the building and was now spreading downwards something that was quite unusual. And in the end, the cladding was fully engulfed except where the brigade could reach it.

And I hope you can see, um, that in the lower levels there. When you look at this photo, I want you to remind yourself that there was over 100 people trying to evacuate from the building when it looked like this on the BBC at 3 o'clock in the morning. A single staircase was provided.

It was needed for evacuation and for the firefighters. There were no evacuation lifts, so anyone who could not walk unaided could not get out of the tower. We know uniquely in England only we use the stay-put strategy, okay, and what that means in the context of this conference is the stay-put strategy requires an even better performance from any active or passive system in the building relative to any other project type.

Speaker B: Okay.

Barbara: This is a photo of the lobby to the single staircase up near level 23. I just want you to look at the 2 flat entrance doors— they're missing— how close they are to the staircase door, which you can't see there on the left. Look how close it is. Look how short the walking distance is.

But very many people were too scared to enter the lobbies. Many cited fear caused by visible smoke leaking through the dampers. Through the vents covering the dampers. They saw— they were afraid of the smoke leaking under the fire doors that were not fit for purpose. They saw smoke flowing through fire doors left ajar because the maintenance team had removed the self-closers from very many doors.

So people were overwhelmed by what they could see and hear. We thankfully did not see or hear anything, but they had to. Okay, and that caused them to be too afraid to keep walking. As time progressed, the evidence shows that the stairs first became smokelogged, so difficult to breathe and see, and then there was a particular period where the stairs were too hot.

It's called a hotspot. People couldn't get past, go down, and the brigade couldn't get up the floors. So the stay-put strategy also relies on something called defend-in-place firefighting, You may say, I've never heard of that. Well, you should read about it when you go home. So the only point I want to raise there is defend-in-place firefighting means firefighters also in buildings like this, high-rise residential, rely even more on the performance of all active and passive systems than in other buildings.

Because the only thing that's available in a building with a stay-put strategy is the fire brigade put out the fire quickly. There's no other provision made when the fire spreads, okay? So by the morning time, London Fire Brigade had not made it up to the upper floors because conditions were too appalling for them in the staircase.

So now just connect what that means. The residents can't get down, the firefighters can't get up, and all of that happened in the last possible moments when people could leave the building. Okay, and that's why for me what happened to the inside of the building is much more important in a way when thinking about lessons learned than simply just thinking about the cladding.

So it's still the common perception it was just the cladding, but as I'm going to explain, another story was unveiled inside the building— a whole-scale failure during design, during construction, and particularly in maintenance. Everything that was not done properly left the residents and the fire brigade with almost nothing to rely on except what was possible by any one individual in any one moment of decision-making.

They had to make, make those decisions on their own. I'm going to summarise some specific statements from the Inquiry report. They're on the slides with the reference, okay, and that's just to tell you some of the final statements made about some of the active systems So regarding the original smoke ventilation system, this had fallen into disrepair partly as a result of inadequate maintenance, and the TMO had no formal maintenance procedures for it.

The new smoke ventilation consisted of fans on the roof and at level 2, and the evidence is that the person tasked with maintaining all the fans Did not know there was a fan on level 2 because he had never been given information about the system and was not sure he had ever tested the performance of the fans during his maintenance regime.

Speaker B: Okay.

Barbara: I wanted to stress that the inquiry said that it was never going to be possible for him to do all of that anyway because of how little time he was given to carry out his work and how little, you know, help he was given to do his work effectively. And I always like to think about those individuals very carefully and understanding, you know, what they faced.

Regarding the dampers provided in the new system, there's— that was very complicated, and the inquiry concluded it was possible because they were uncertified, they may have allowed extra smoke to flow into the lobbies, but they left it there. However, they did say very firmly that the circumstances surrounding the choice of dampers demonstrated insufficient concern for fire safety, to which we think it important to draw attention as part of the events which led to the tragedy.

So for me, the whole building lifecycle must be considered, and all our activities in every stage counts. Design isn't better than construction, isn't more important than maintenance, isn't more important than ongoing fire risk management. Why things have been done, why things are needed, must be communicated clearly from stage to stage to enable those doing the relevant works to do them well.

It's only by taking a fully interconnected approach a safe building can be produced And yes, maintenance counts. Competent persons know that care and attention is required for all physical aspects of any building, as is careful attention and understanding of who will live and work there. Competent persons make the effort to understand that no single fire safety measure, no single product, you know, in isolation can cause a fire-safe building.

Ethical practice means competent persons taking the time to learn how to communicate and collaborate with all the different disciplines and trades to design and deliver every component of a building. Fire safety measures to protect people and prevent fires impact almost all aspects of a building form and require long-term management and maintenance. A systems approach to this asks professionals in the built environment industry to consider how complex interconnected factors influence fire risk, and it means professionals taking ownership of their impact on the final condition of the fire safety measures.

So yes, the whole building lifecycle must be considered, and yes, all of our activities in every stage counts. And ethical practice means learning, as I've said, how those interconnected factors influence the final risk levels. Everyone here, I'm sure, and elsewhere is increasingly well-versed in the definition of competency being the application of skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviour to achieve a defined outcome.

I like to focus on ethical practice, and in order to explain what I mean by that, I currently rely on the ethical principles document jointly created by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Council. The ethical principles are to guide what's termed engineering practice and behaviour, but I want to emphasise that the definition of engineering is very expansive in the guide, so if you don't, you know, self-identify as an engineer, don't feel that this doesn't apply to you, okay?

The guide sets out the underpinning fundamental principles, and I'm just going to very briefly touch on each 5 to give you a flavour of what these are. The first ethical principle is that of honesty and integrity, so professionals have a duty to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct at all times. Specifics include acting reliably and trustworthy ways and being accountable for our actions.

It also means avoiding knowingly misleading others. The next ethical principle is responsibility to society. So as professionals, we have a duty to protect people, respect rights, uphold the trust placed in them by society, and we are to give due weight to facts, published standards and guidance, and to act to assess and manage risk.

One of the most important ethical principles in my mind is the one called accuracy and rigour. In this, it means professionals act with care and diligence in all their work, recognising the public trust depends on our accuracy, our integrity and quality. We undertake work only within our current competence. We ensure we have the right knowledge and expertise.

And I think something that's very important is we're prepared to test evidence objectively and without bias. Respecting the views of others, and with awareness of assumptions, uncertainty, and limits of understanding. The 4th ethical principle is leadership and communication. The 5th deals with our responsibility for the future of technology, society, and the environment.

In thinking particularly about rigour as an antidote to the findings of the Inquiry regarding the design and maintenance standards of some of the systems I touched on today, Rigour should cause an honest and transparent approach to work, work that is done accurately, understanding the full context within which the work will be relied upon in the end by the public in our buildings, and work that is explained and documented clearly every single time.

Finally, to acknowledge the change going on around us. The context of our work is changing, and at times it feels it can be overwhelming. But it also allows us deeply positive opportunities to be creative, caring, and innovative through our commitment to excellence. We know the built environment is being increasingly tested by overheating, and this is starting to impact building owners, occupiers, residents, and firefighters.

Thinking beyond minimum requirements and pursuing true excellence across the built environment will therefore require much more explicit understanding of and research into emerging trends and future challenges for the built and natural environment. We know that the UK's population is growing and ageing. We know too that up to 30% of residents in social housing may have vulnerabilities relevant to evacuating in the event of a fire.

Yet we continue to make little provision for such vulnerabilities, thus exposing a rising part of our population to inequitable risk levels as a result. Again, thinking beyond minimum requirements and pursuing true excellence across the built environment will require much more effort from all of us to reduce this inequity. We can apply the immense ingenuity in our sector to solve this problem and any other emerging risk and issue.

That is something I'm very confident on. And this conference challenges us to raise standards, prove competence, deliver better buildings. And I hope you have found something personally for you in your own work in some of the words I have communicated to you today. And you'll be pleased to hear the presentation is over and it is question time.

David: Well, thank you very much, Barbara. Any questions immediately? I've got one while you're thinking about your questions. One thing from the inquiry, and this is a difficult one I get for you, but Where were the CEOs? Where were the chief executives of these companies that had driven a culture of cutting corners?

Barbara: That is a tricky one about who was sent to the inquiry, okay? And I probably don't want to get more explicit than that, but I can say that I— and that's why I wanted to emphasise about, you know, the guy who wasn't given enough time nor the drawings to do his job properly.

I don't think that's his fault at all. Like, and I, I don't know if he's still worried, but I hope that he doesn't need to be. That, that, that is completely unacceptable. So the CEOs, you know, will have to see what happens next, and we have to hope that they will not ever let their employees and other people be left in such circumstances again.

Is that an okay way to—

David: Thank you. Very political.

Barbara: Thank you.

Q2: Yeah. Hi, thank you. Great presentation, by the way. I'm Felipe, I'm CEO at Optima BI, your simulator in the room next door. I hated the first part, not because of you, but because of the content.

Barbara: You hated the first part? Is that what you said? Oh, okay.

Q2: Yeah, not because of you, but because of the content and how impactful it is and how raw it still feels.

At the end though, however, you asked a really good question, or you posed, uh, you know, kind of, let's do something together, change.

10 years on, what remains the biggest barrier to change in our industry?

Barbara: I mean, I think there's a few, but I think something that I don't feel is talked about enough, if I can put it that way, I mentioned it at the start, is the dirty issue of money. Okay, how we are, you know, and I said this in Scotland last week, you know, if a client isn't prepared to pay for a competent person, if the client isn't prepared to pay for the time someone needs to do their job well, really can all the change that we may all be committed to happen?

So I think there's a whole kind of unspoken part that needs a very good airing around how services are procured in the construction industry and how we deal with what we're prepared to pay with regards to the final quality of what we are all able to produce in what we all know tends to be frantic, limited time.

Q3: Thank you. This is probably going to follow on from, from that question, actually. We run industry research every year on the adoption of the Building Safety Act within the sector, one of the biggest misconceptions that comes through every year is that the Building Safety Act only applies to HRBs, doesn't apply to me, my head is still in the sand.

Barbara: Yeah.

Q3: So we just don't see a lot of evidence suggesting that procurement practices are changing sufficiently fast enough To focus less on cost and speed and more on quality of materials and quality of the supply chain. In your opinion, what more can we do to accelerate that pace of change and those better procurement practices?

Barbara: Well, first of all, I, you know, speaking personally, I have to say that now, I would like to see the regulator doing far more communication on the fact that it isn't just new HRBs. Okay? I think there's a very serious problem with our existing building stock that requires far more attention. And I think there's all different types of stakeholders— sorry, I don't know what company you come from, but maybe connect with me on LinkedIn.

I think there's a whole series of stakeholders need to take responsibility for— that's why I keep talking about the whole built environment, the whole building lifecycle. and show a mature and sophisticated acceptance and action plan to make buildings better. That's about all I can say in public. I could start talking about, you know, the Western economy and economics, but it's not appropriate at a conference.

Yeah.

David: Rachel's actually from BESA, so she runs our—

Barbara: Rachel, very nice to meet you. I do say to students sometimes when I talk to them, they're all really sad. And they say they're never going to work for people like this, and I tell them, yes, you will. You know, I do always now, when I meet certain big companies, when they come in to harangue me, I always like to see if they're private or publicly owned and how much profit is going out to their shareholders and how that relates to how much money they're prepared to invest in improving the safety of existing buildings.

And producing innovative quality solutions for new buildings.

David: Another question from me, and that is, a building is a complete system, it's one product, but we tend to assemble products at the cheapest possible price. And the industry is also very good at coming up with a simple solution to one thing, as opposed to seeing it all connected. Is there a danger we're going to seal these buildings, make them really safe, and then in 10 years' time find that we value engineered the ventilation.

And it's not adequate, and we've created illness long-term for the residents.

Barbara: Yeah. Yes. I mean, I think you can probably all answer that question yourselves. Yes.

David: How do we overcome that? I was hoping for a bit more.

Barbara: Oh no, sorry. I mean, you know, I can go, you know, like, that kind of worries me. I mean, I think because I'm in safer territory here, like, I'm looking at bricks I don't know if you all know what a brick slip is. It's a bit of a brick glued onto a bit of a thing.

You can slam it up on a 50-storey building really quickly, cheap as chips. And as I like to say to people, you absolutely don't need any technical expertise whatsoever to know that something glued onto a building in high wind or in a fire isn't going to work very well. Okay, so it's just trying to change that mindset.

And that's why I keep wanting to talk about people and the public and our duty to, you know, the UK public and the UK economy. How much do you think it's costing the taxpayer to repair all these buildings now? So to me, it's very foolish to just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Is that okay? Is that better than yes?

David: Yeah, much better. Thank you. I guess I'm still on. Okay.

Barbara: Yeah. Anyway, you can ask me whatever you like.

David: There's a question over there. Well, while we're waiting to get the microphone over there, another thing is, this is personal experience, that in a building that needed to be remediated for compartmentation, I'm fed up with getting gaslit by professionals telling me that we need to virtually knock the thing down and start again.

Where did the reasonableness go out the window?

Barbara: I thought you were going to tell me about the people who use the word proportionate 800 times an hour. Yeah, as an excuse to do absolutely nothing. Now, I'm sorry to hear that people want to, you know, tear down a building for, for that sake. And again, look, it's those 2 extremes— to get away with doing nothing, ridiculously over the top.

And this is where being pragmatic and putting the public interest first with a bit of, you know, proper expertise Surely we can do better than that.

Q4: Uh, Stuart Painter, Care Places.

Barbara: Oh, sorry, yeah, I couldn't see you.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, my ventriloquist act. I'm just trying to work out— there's a, there's a couple of things that occurred to me, and I might be being naive, but has the public got any protection in respect of if somebody says, well, we've got guidance that says 18 metres or 11 metres and I build it 10 centimetres below that, I've effectively got the same risk but a different, potentially a different set of guidance that would apply.

Is there a way that when something like that, say a building 17.9 metres in height as opposed to 18 metres for the sake of argument, goes through the process, that it's actually looked at in respect of risk?

And secondly, there's, there's something within building regulations about, I think it's a material alteration, Which effectively says for stuff that's still there, that as long as you don't make it worse than it was before, even if it's not compliant, it's okay.

Barbara: Okay, these are deeply triggering subjects for me.

Q4: And I was just— I was looking to trigger you.

Barbara: Yeah, zen breathing. Are you a 17.8 kind of guy or an 18 metres kind of guy? What do you think?

Speaker D: Well, I would be looking to make it as safe as possible.

Barbara: You're as safe as possible. Okay. So relying on guidance to get away with doing something instead of thinking about ultimate risk levels, I think it's unprofessional. I also happen to think it's illegal, but that's for lawyers to say. Material clause, the infamous clause 4(3), does not say - actually, it's just we've translated it into that and we tell ourselves the story over and over and over again - it doesn't say if something isn't safe, you can keep it anyway. Okay? And the top trumps is the regulatory reform order, if you're into that, where you're meant to think about risk in the whole, how people are impacted in a potential fire holistically, and then you're meant to make sensible decisions. then about if you need to repair or replace something.

Why no one— why some people won't do that, that's a whole other conference.

Q5: Hi, Karen Fletcher from the Sectoscope magazine. Talking about ethical practice kind of implies that there would be a way of dealing with unethical practice. So for example, whistleblowing if you think something's going on. I think perhaps many of the people in this room, say the subcontractors, Would feel reluctant to call that out, perhaps it's difficult for them.

Where—

how does that work? How do you see it working?

Barbara: I have to say I get asked about this a lot confidentially at conferences I speak to now. On a very serious note, there is a whistleblowing policy in the Building Safety Regulator. You should find— maybe BESA could— I'm happy to— you should know more about it and you should always do your absolute best to try and raise your concerns.

Okay, I would like to see the Engineering Council and all the professional bodies starting to take seriously that we're not meant to place subcontractors in a position where they know something is dangerous and they have no ability whatsoever to raise those issues. Completely unacceptable and unethical.

Q6: Yes, Adrian Hurley from FB Hurley. This is more of a statement. We, we don't seem to be learning very much about Well, we learn a lot about how we can't bring all the services together. We need to space them out in terms of when they go through firewalls. But we still seem to be obsessed with trying to squeeze everything, a quart into a pint pot.

We're trying to squeeze it down the corridors, which seem to be the only arteries that we're given, and they're the width of a pair of doors. And these days things just don't fit.

Barbara: Yeah.

Speaker E: And we're forever trying to squeeze them in, and it just doesn't seem to be working.

Barbara: Yeah, no, I know. I mean, again, I'm sorry to say yes, and I know I would like to see the regulator— and do you know the CLC, the Construction Leadership Council? I think culture change being real and profound will be when the regulator and really big, you know, big organisations like the CLC start to get way more honest about what we all know is happening in what are, you know, the real world in inverted commas, and try and do something to sort it out.

I can't claim that I have that power or anything like that, so I don't know how to cheer you up, but I think people being quiet about these things is terribly foolish, and you must have ways where you could start to ask the BSI and other people to start getting real. Yeah, not, you know, if the majority ask, we must be able to get somewhere.

Q7: I'm Alec Wisniewski of Angie Bailey. I think many people would like to help in the process, but they don't know exactly how, what to do. Do you think that the government could develop a set of workflows, verification checklists, and go detail by detail to explain Exactly what it means, what the competent person should do at different stages, and potentially there should be an overarching competent person that will check all those individual steps, having everybody accountable with signatures, dates, trainings, and so on.

Barbara: So in a way, the Act tries to do that, but MHCLG, so the ministry, are in fact looking at all the different professions at the moment. You can kind of Google that when you go home. And yes, I would like to see that level of clarity, and there are people trying to do work in the way that you describe.

So I'm a so-called fire engineer. We're apparently going to become a regulated profession soon. That doesn't mean I get to stay in the office doing my stuff I was telling you about later. It's going to be about accountability, where you get out there, and if you have a fire strategy, you're going to have to make sure that that's what actually has been delivered And be accountable for it in full.

So I think I see the ministry trying to make that change, but it's being firmly resisted all over the industry, and we have to also be honest about that.

Q8: Hi, Remi Suzan, Gratt Brothers.

Um, you said it earlier, the dirty word of money. Yeah, all of these things, making the building slightly taller so you can fit services in, it all adds up to money. And basically, and going back to what you were saying about the existing stock, developers don't want to go back because it will cost them money.

The only way you're going to do this is if somebody gets prosecuted, and it hasn't happened yet.

Barbara: Not yet.

David: That's it? That's it.

Barbara: What's going to happen then? I hear it. What is going to happen then? Yeah.

David: So I made a promise you'd be out of the building by 3 o'clock so you could go on holiday. Thank you very much, Dr. Barbara Rainey.