Fire Safety: Dame Judith Hackitt reveals harsh realities for facilities management industry

Anyone who performs any high-risk task in industry is is required to ensure that they employ someone who's competent to do the job. What we also have to fix in this system is ensuring that the products that get used in maintaining the building are properly assured.

Dame Judith Hackitt is the go-to expert on building and fire safety. She spent nearly a decade as chair of the health and safety executive and led the independent review of building regulations and fire safety following the Grenfell Tower fire. They were responsible for four care homes. They were fined over £100,000 due to defective and missing fire alarm systems, damaged fire doors, and outdated fire risk assessments.

Do you think that building owners and landlords realise their responsibilities and the risks that they carry?

I find it hard to believe that they don't. I think the question is why have they not taken their responsibility seriously enough? You can delegate the work but you can never delegate the accountability. Let's not fool ourselves. The outrage that people feel as a result of Grenfell and of everything that's come to light since then in terms of the ways in which people have failed step up to that moral responsibility in the past. the philosophy that sits behind it that says the higher the risk in a building, the more effort you need to put into ensuring that you understand the safety case for this building and its occupants. You're the expert. Make those decisions, make those recommendations, and stand by them. The big thing is we just have to start thinking about.

Hello, I'm Lisa Hamilton from SFG20. Today I'm joined by Dame Judith Hackitt and we're here to talk about how the increasingly stringent fire safety obligations are affecting not only facilities managers, but also building owners.

Dame Judith, welcome.

Thank you.

So, I'd like to start by talking about some of the findings from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase 2 report, which contains some truly shocking findings. For example, the CEO of the tenant management organisation failed to disclose areas of non-compliance with the fire safety order. Inspection and maintenance regimes affecting fire prevention systems didn't reflect best practice and were inconsistently followed. And their only fire assessor had invented some of his qualifications.

So my question is how can those in the facilities management industry avoid this happening to them and ensure that their building maintenance is safe and compliant?

I think one of the key issues here is about assuring competence of the people that you use. And that's not that's not a totally alien concept. If if you look at lots lots of aspects of of our health and safety regime more broadly anyone who performs any high-risk task in industry is the duty holder the accountable person is required to ensure that they employ someone who is competent to do the job. So I think that that for me is is where this this whole thing starts. Be sure you're using people who know what they're doing. Ask them to demonstrate their competence, prove their competence. But what I think is also linked to that, although you didn't mention it from the inquiry, is is what we also have to fix in this system is ensuring that the products that get used in maintaining the building as well as the products that get used in building the building in the first place are properly assured as well. So one of the big gaps we still have to fill and which uh the government has made a a real commitment to do in its response to the inquiry is to address this whole issue of of construction products and how they are tested which I think is hugely hugely important.

Okay. You've previously said that the fire safety sector is not as mature or as strong as other elements of engineering such as structural engineering. Why do you think that is and what needs to be done about that?

I think it's about the professional bodies in some ways and the ways in which they they ensure that people are properly accredited to do the work. So I've been quite critical of some of the professional bodies in that space around their their lack of rigor in in ensuring that people who they provide certification and CPD to are are truly competent. But the corollary of that of course is that not only do those professional bodies have to be better at doing what they do to give confidence in the people that they accredit. But you also have to at the same time have organisations taking on people who recognise how important their competence is and do not fall into the trap of simply taking on anyone who says they're a fire engineer without checking that they are indeed competent to do what they say they can do.

Okay. What do the enhanced fire safety obligations mean for maintenance professionals?

Personally, and I'm not trying to play this down, believe me, I but I genuinely think what we are in the business of doing here is ensuring that people do what they always should have been doing. I don't think this is a massive leap in new responsibilities, new standards. The problem we're trying to address is one of people not performing properly in the past. You've given the examples from Grenfell. And so what we are about is actually getting people to do the job they always should have been doing. Yeah. We're now starting to see penalties imposed upon those responsible for buildings that fail to meet the new fire regulations. So for example, two directors recently were fined, they were responsible for four care homes. They were fined over £100,000 due to defective and missing fire alarm systems, damaged fire doors, and outdated fire risk assessments.

Do you think that building owners and landlords realise their responsibilities and the risks that they carry?

I find it hard to believe that they don't. I think the question is one of why have they not taken their responsibilities seriously enough and and for me I think we are we are kind of um dancing around this as being new responsibilities being placed on them when actually what we should be talking about is their appallingly cynical attitude towards the people who they had a moral duty of care for all along long before the new regulations came into place. That's exactly what the judge said in that case that he stated that the owners should have familiarised themselves with the relevant regulations and guidance when operating care homes.

So, do you think that building owners are aware that they're accountable for the maintenance that is performed in their buildings or do you think that they outsource the work and they outsource the risk in their in their minds?

If they think that, then I can't possibly explain to you why they think that because I don't know of any system that works like that. If you're the owner, you are responsible. You are accountable. You can delegate the work, but you can never delegate the accountability. Indeed, it's very simple in my mind. You know, I'm a house owner. I can bring someone else in to do the work, but if I bring people in who do shoddy work, then I'm partly to blame for not having put the due diligence in to finding the right people.

100%. So what can happen to building owners if their building is not maintained in a compliant fashion? Clearly I've just given an example of fines. Are those fines limited? Are they unlimited? Could it result in, for example, prison time?

I think we have we have yet to see the the full extent to which um the penalties can bite. And it's always important for people to remember that that isn't solely driven by the powers that the regulators have, right? But we for sure have raised the bar very significantly in terms of the the level of penalties that can be um imposed by the by the new regulator. But when things get to court, the issue then becomes one of of, you know, as you've just described, how a judge will see that. And let's not let's not fool ourselves. The outrage that people feel as a result of Grenfell and of everything that's come to light since then in terms of the ways in which people have failed to step up to that moral responsibility in the past I think is going to result in people taking a very dim view of people with those cynical attitudes towards the people they're responsible for.

Yeah. So, some buildings such as hospitals fall outside of scope of the higher risk buildings as defined under the building safety act for the occupation phase. But what are their responsibilities under the fire safety order?

Again I think rather than focusing on what's in and what's out for me this is about a change in attitude and although they hospitals may not be covered by the building safety act per se, we all know that over time there is a scope within the act for the for the for the scope of what is covered by high-risk buildings to change and whether that changes or not. The philosophy that sits behind it that says the higher the risk in a building, the more effort you need to put into ensuring that you understand the safety case for this building and its occupants. That principle applies no matter what.

Absolutely. And don't we all assume that that is the case anyway?

One would like to hope so. Yes. It's traumatic enough going into hospital if we all had to worry about but have they got a good fire risk strategy? Can I trust them to get me out of here if there's a fire? We take that for granted. We assume that that's being done. So it should be I'd like to move on to the principle of the golden thread which means that building information management needs to be structured, traceable, accurate and held digitally.

Would you advise all commercial building owners and managers to adopt the golden thread approach?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I find it quite extraordinary the extent to which this sector which we call the built environment. But you know whether that's a good definition or not, I don't know, it means something but the fact that there is so much less in terms of record keeping um and information stored about not just what was built but how it was built what the limitations of it on it are what the fire uh strategy is what the design philosophy behind the building was and so I just find it extraordinary that that doesn't exist because in any other sector whether that's you know chemicals where I came from whether it's manufacturing industry in general white goods manufacture all of those things they can trace everything they know what the limitations are on what they can do they know how things perform so it's absolutely I think a case of getting up to speed with what we all kind of thought was happening but wasn't. And if you're going to do that in the 21st century, let's not do it on paper. For goodness sake, let's do it digitally.

You mentioned learning from other sectors. What do you think can be learned from sectors such as oil and gas, chemicals, and aviation to help improve building safety?

I think the learning is is first of all about this is a journey and you can't fix everything overnight. So, so if you if you talked to if you talked to the oil and gas industry or or more generally the major hazards industries, they would tell you about the journey they went through on introducing the safety case regime, which is very much what we're doing for high-rise buildings in in this sector. And they will be able to I think give people that reassurance that the regulator acts in a proportionate way in relation to existing facilities. It doesn't immediately raise the bar for existing facilities to the same standard that it would expect from new build. The evidence is there and clear in that sector that that's the kind of proportionate approach that the regulator takes and that the regulator is willing to sit down and talk about a program of work to get to where you've got to get to rather than a massive panic to get things done instantly. The government have recently announced bringing responsibility for fire safety into a single department, The Ministry of Housing.

What impact do you think that this will have in terms of industry and duty holders?

Very little actually. It's gone back to where it was actually. It was in communities and local government. It then went to the Home Office and now it's come back again. So I'm not sure it will make a great deal of difference to to people out there in industry. What I think it is part of is that sense of taking a much more systematic approach to thinking about fire safety within buildings. And putting that with the people who are who are working on all of these issues around following up on the on the public inquiry and you know putting new legislation in place and ensuring that it's all consistent and ties in properly.

And and finally on that point, the government have also recently announced that they will be introducing regulations to improve fire safety. What do you think that's likely to cover?

Well, it's going to cover a number of things, isn't it? So, I've already said that I think one of the big issues we still have to address is the fitness for purpose of the materials that we use, and that is that is no small task to fix that whole system will require a huge amount of work. As well as driving very different behaviours among a very different group of people, the people who supply those construction products. But anyone who's read the public inquiry knows why we have to do that. And again that comes right back to we need people on the other side, the people who are purchasing those materials, whether it be for new build or existing to understand that they their responsibilities in relation to not just specifying the right materials in the first place, but not accepting substitutes unless they can be assured that they're truly equivalent and all of that. So, that's a massive massive issue in itself. But also I think we're we have seen that, you know, some of the things that we've accepted for a long time have to change. Staircases, you know, how we ever arrived at single staircases in so many high-rise buildings, I don't know. And thank goodness we put a stop to that. So, there's there's lots of incremental things and and and they feel incremental to me. I know they're a big deal when it comes to making that happen in properties. But the big thing is we just have to start thinking about buildings as systems and thinking about what are the best ways in which we can improve the overall fire safety of the building. So we move away from this debate that I keep getting involved in. Should we specify sprinklers? Should we do this? Should we? You should make an assessment on what is the best way to improve the fire safety of the building. And you have a number of choices, but you're the expert. Make those decisions, make those recommendations, and stand by them.

Dame Judith, thank you for your time today. Thank you. 

That’s a great vision for the future. Thank you very much, Dame Judith.

Thank you.