Crucial fire safety updates for built environment professionals

International fire safety standards consultation

Later, Craig Ross, Associate Director of the Built Environment at RICS, invited the delegates to comment on the new UN-backed International Fire Safety Standards – Common Principles (IFSS). The consultation for this important document closes on 23 March.

Created with more than 70 international partners, including the World Bank, the document will establish a set of five internationally accepted common principles – prevention, detection and communication, occupant protection, containment and extinguishment.

Explaining the background to IFSS, Ross said: ‘Fire knows no geographical or political boundaries, but the differing approaches to buildings fire safety across the globe can be inconsistent, ineffective and in some cases, non-existent. There is an urgent need to deliver better safety for people’s homes, communities and workplaces and RICS is committed to being at the heart of this.’

Valuation of high-rise properties

John Baguley, Tangible Assets Valuation Director at RICS, then spoke about the issues that have affected the valuation of properties with ACM cladding since the Grenfell fire. RICS has recognised that this is an industry-wide problem, and recently agreed – along with the Building Societies Association and UK Finance – a new External Wall Systems Form, designed to help people buy and sell homes and re-mortgage in buildings above 18 metres.

Helping surveyors go forward

Graham Watts, Chief Executive at Construction Industry Council, told the delegates he had been working in construction for nearly twenty years prior to the Grenfell Tower fire, and that during that entire period building safety was taken for granted and rarely discussed. He wondered whether the industry had seriously considered the health, safety and welfare of building occupiers, but believed there would soon be a new ‘Hackitt-plus’ profession, driven by the new building safety regulatory system overseeing competence.

Next, a thought-provoking legal update from Sailesh Mehta, Barrister at Red Lion Chambers reported on lessons learned from miscarriages of justice, having prosecuted and defended in fire cases for 25 years – many of those cases involving fatalities and expert evidence. ‘As a result of a series of high-profile miscarriages of justice, the Court of Appeal and the Law Commission have voiced mounting concern about the use of expert evidence in criminal trials,’ Mehta said.

In the afternoon, a panel of experts – including John Baguley, Graham Watts and Neil O’Connor – answered a wide-ranging series of fire safety questions from delegates. Howard Passey, Director of Operations at the Fire Protection Association discussed fire testing and certification, and Nicholas Coombes, NFCC Protection Vice Chair, Hackitt and Remediation Lead and Strategic Technical Advisor at the London Fire Brigade, examined the issues and causes of a fire and how it could have been prevented, highlighting a number of case studies.