The Great Tower Block Fire Tragedy of London

[HanoiVillan]

Hard to know what to say really.

[chrisp65]

It’s important we draw a line under this whole affair and move on with vim voom and vigour.

We must not stand in the way of maximising profit just so people don’t burn to death or die of smoke inhalation.

 

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It’s important we draw a line under this whole affair and move on with vim voom and vigour.

We must not stand in the way of maximising profit just so people don’t burn to death or die of smoke inhalation.

 

I obviously agree strongly with the sentiment behind the bitterness, but I can't 'like' it; I feel just so upset at this.

I don't know, it was a stupid thing really, and I had no connection to the fire or the victims whatsoever, but I got very upset after it happened because I had just been teaching two Italian students of exactly the same age as the two Italians that died on the top floor of the tower and for what I recognise is just randomness I kept picturing those two students as the people dying in the fire and I got very worked up. Seeing this this morning is bringing it all back. Horrible and absurd, makes it seem like I'm trying to be a 'victim' which I absolutely am not in any way, but there's just something about imagining the way everyone in that tower died, it hurts.

[snowychap]

Grenfell firm took some of cladding savings for itself, inquiry told

Quote

The main contractor on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment secretly “pocketed” £126,000 while switching the cladding to cheaper, more combustible materials, the inquiry into the deadly fire at the building has heard.

Rydon was bidding for the project in March 2014 when it told the landlord of the council block that it could save £293,368 by switching from the originally specified zinc cladding to plastic-filled aluminium panels, which the inquiry has heard had “significantly worse” fire performance.

At the time, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants’ Management Organisation (KCTMO) was trying to cut more than £800,000 from the costs and had told Rydon it was “in pole position” to win the contract.

Rydon knew that the actual saving from the switch would be £419,627, but kept this from the client and “took some of the savings for themselves”, possibly as additional profit, Simon Lawrence, Rydon’s contract manager, admitted to the inquiry.

...

Lawrence also admitted he did not investigate the fire performance of the ACM panels and said he did not know they performed significantly worse than zinc in a fire.

...

Earlier on Monday the inquiry was told that Rydon promised five times to appoint fire safety advisers but failed to do so. Instead, it relied on the building control department at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, which owned the block, to advise on whether there were any safety problems.

Lawrence admitted Rydon did not tell the client or the architect it was not hiring a fire expert despite having said it would do so in meetings in April, June, July, September and October 2014 as works were getting under way.

...

Earlier, Lawrence said Rydon did not normally employ specialist fire consultants and that the company felt “comfortable with the risk” of overcladding Grenfell Tower as it had done it before on social housing blocks. Plus, he said, it was using “what we believed to be a competent specialist sub-contractor”.

...

The inquiry heard that when Chris Holt, Rydon’s site manager, asked Lawrence about the need to address fire safety, he was reassured that it was in hand.

In a written statement to the inquiry, Holt said: “I was aware that as the refurbishment was to a residential block of flats, one of the main risk factors would be fire safety. When I started on the project I spoke to Simon Lawrence and asked whether I was required to consider aspects of fire safety in my role. Simon informed me that it was not part of my role and had been dealt with.”

Lawrence said he did not recall this conversation.

 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I obviously agree strongly with the sentiment behind the bitterness, but I can't 'like' it; I feel just so upset at this.

I don't know, it was a stupid thing really, and I had no connection to the fire or the victims whatsoever, but I got very upset after it happened because I had just been teaching two Italian students of exactly the same age as the two Italians that died on the top floor of the tower and for what I recognise is just randomness I kept picturing those two students as the people dying in the fire and I got very worked up. Seeing this this morning is bringing it all back. Horrible and absurd, makes it seem like I'm trying to be a 'victim' which I absolutely am not in any way, but there's just something about imagining the way everyone in that tower died, it hurts.

Similar.

I don’t mean to keep banging on about it but this one got to me also. The stories of the families, just good people trying to do the best by their families and treated like an inconvenience by a Landlord that only sees them as units of potential income and profit. Partly also I guess because of the job I’m in and I know I’m constantly challenged to make savings by Clients and contractors and we lose work to companies that will ‘innovate’.

So I think I also saw it to some extent from the point of view of the poor bastard somewhere that specified those materials. No time to do proper design, no time to properly consider materials. No help from Building Control because they are too busy to do anything but sign off what looks ‘normal’.

The whole construction system is more and more based on zero time for design. The real consequence of which is real people die.

We have tenders that we have lost purely on price and I know there can be no possible way somebody has beaten us on price by doing anything but cutting out the design time. 

The one perverse sliver of ‘good’, I will now pull out the Grenfell card whenever challenged too hard on how something could be cheaper and quicker.

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

Grenfell firm took some of cladding savings for itself, inquiry told

As a former QS I can tell you that as part of value engineering you that is absolutely typical behaviour and something I've got a successful hit rate of about maybe 95%, you target somewhere between 20-50% staying in your pocket for various different reasons 

Its so common and prevelant that if you can't pocket some of the saving yourself when doing VE I would question your ability as a QS

[snowychap]

7 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

As a former QS I can tell you that as part of value engineering you that is absolutely typical behaviour and something I've got a successful hit rate of about maybe 95%, you target somewhere between 20-50% staying in your pocket for various different reasons 

Its so common and prevelant that if you can't pocket some of the saving yourself when doing VE I would question your ability as a QS

Well, that's all fine and dandy that it's the norm and the measure of someone's ability in the job to 'pocket' some of the saving.

As long as they also take to their beds every night some of the guilt or, preferably, take it to a study with an old service revolver.

Edited July 21, 2020 by snowychap

[chrisp65]

It’s the way the system is built.

Fees will be based on the cost of the job. So any designer or consultant or contractor that find a cheaper way of doing something would need the incentive of pocketing a slice, or they would never do it.

Hey boys, this million quid job where I’m on 2.6%, well I think I’ve found a way of making it a £900k job.

That ain’t ever going to happen.

It’s a fundamentally wrong system.

Edited July 21, 2020 by chrisp65

[snowychap]

7 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It’s the way the system is built...

It appears to be built for the benefit of and with the complicity of the actors within it.

Again, if they're going to be pocketing a slice of (possibly questionable) gains then they should be taking at least the moral if not also the physical hit for their input in to the process.

Edited July 21, 2020 by snowychap

[villa4europe]

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Well, that's all fine and dandy that it's the norm and the measure of someone's ability in the job to 'pocket' some of the saving.

As long as they also take to their beds every night some of the guilt or, preferably, take it to a locked study with an old service revolver.

Hard to tell

In theory you send out the enquiry for the package with all the specifications and requirements 

The subcontractor then sends you something back, a price and an alternative product, the alternative product ultimately gets signed off by the design team, they have the technical qualification to approve it

The money sits outside of this 

The idea that an estimator or a QS have placed an order with an inferior product to save money is misleading, it still gets design approval, personally I know that 1. I'm not capable or qualified of signing off a cladding spec 2. I've never worked at a company would allow me to, a QS does not have PI and a QS should also know the significance of this because you're taught it at uni 

I'm not going to say the 2 aren't linked but the QS on this project doing what every QS in the country does during VE is not why this happened

[villa4europe]

1 minute ago, snowychap said:

It appears to be built for the benefit of and with the complicity of the actors within it.

Again, if they're going to be pocketing a slice of (possibly questionable) gains then they should be taking the moral (and perhaps not soo metaphorical) hit for their input in to the process.

You do it the other way then

The contractor has an overhead of 8%, takes this project on at 2.6% margin, the shortfall is achieved via VE or via a claim, which one does the client want? 

The actors in it as you put it is the entire industry top to bottom 

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It appears to be built for the benefit of and with the complicity of the actors within it.

Again, if they're going to be pocketing a slice of (possibly questionable) gains then they should be taking the moral (and perhaps not soo metaphorical) hit for their input in to the process.

The Client decides what sort of contract they want to engage in.

The Client, most often, wants the contract that superficially appears to involve the Client in the minimum risk at the lowest cost. That’s fine, that’s design and build on the surface of things and probably the majority of big contracts are design and build.

That has just put design and specification in to the hands of a construction company that want the job done as fast as possible to the minimum standard that meets the contract. It strips out time and design and thought.

It could be changed overnight by the government leading by example and not awarding D&B contracts on a lowest price wind basis.

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

The subcontractor then sends you something back, a price and an alternative product, the alternative product ultimately gets signed off by the design team, they have the technical qualification to approve it

The money sits outside of this 

 

That’s surprisingly naive or mischievous to suggest the design team have the technical qualifications to approve cladding etc that we all know have never been lab tested.

The money, is front and centre of this. I can’t think of any instance where I’ve seen anyone suggest an alternative product that did essentially the same job, but for a bit more money.

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

Hard to tell

No, not hard to tell, really.

One can come up with all sorts of escuses and scenarios where 'it's typical', or a measure of someone's ability, or A waives away responsibility because it's B's area or A assumes it's B's area or B said that it was in hand, and on and on and on. But really it's not all that hard to suppose that cutting costs, cutting corners, doing the 'typical thing' that does actually sound a little dodgy when laid bare as a stark assessment and not all dressed up in self-justications that abound in the industry by those involved in these 'typical' work practices, &c. might lead to a scenario where something bad happens and that by being a part of the process that leads to that scenario one has helped bring it about.

 

[villa4europe]

Ad a contractor I disagree, you're a middle man

you send out the enquiry to a cladding specialist, he will send over an alternative proposal

That proposal will be sent to the design team for approval

The contractors estimating / QS team isn't qualified to approve the alternative, you might have a little bit of experience and know its not suitable but that's hit and miss, I haven't for example, I can VE composite cladding and get cheaper alternatives of effectively the same products from a different supplier but I don't have the knowledge to VE composite cladding to rain screen cladding 

The commercial team should not be playing with that kind of technical data, like I said they have no PI

[villa4europe]

1 minute ago, snowychap said:

No, not hard to tell, really.

One can come up with all sorts of escuses and scenarios where 'it's typical', or a measure of someone's ability, or A waives away responsibility because it's B's area or A assumes it's B's area or B said that it was in hand, and on and on and on. But really it's not all that hard to suppose that cutting costs, cutting corners, doing the 'typical thing' that does actually sound a little dodgy when laid bare as a stark assessment and not all dressed up in self-justications that abound in the industry by those involved in these 'typical' work practices, &c. might lead to a scenario where something bad happens and that by being a part of the process that leads to that scenario one has helped bring it about.

 

As per my other response 

The commercial team do not have the technical qualification or covered by the insurance to make assessments of products and designs, it has to be approved by someone else 

The man who is taking a chunk of the saving and putting it in his pocket is not the man that is approving a product that is not suitable 

Its 2 different things 

[snowychap]

29 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

You do it the other way then

The contractor has an overhead of 8%, takes this project on at 2.6% margin, the shortfall is achieved via VE or via a claim, which one does the client want? 

The actors in it as you put it is the entire industry top to bottom 

You fail to understand what I'm saying, which is that if you're going to be happy to be pocketing the share of these reduced costs (or in this case also partly compensating for the mistake of underpricing the total works -as per the link above) then you should be happy to take some of the moral share for the outcome of the process to which you have contributed.

If the people involved in that process aren't happy to take on that risk (of the responsiblity for the grave outcome) then they either shouldn't be participating in that process or if they're happy to waive it away and just carry on as normal sleeping like babies then they deserve the opprobrium dished out to them.

Edited July 21, 2020 by snowychap
and for aznd

[snowychap]

44 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

As per my other response

And as per your other response(s), these are simply ways of one part of a process washing its hands of any responsiblity by claiming that it's all down to someone else.

The whole process led to this end result. Those involved in that process, especially those (Rydon, though Lawrence) who said (link)

Quote

that the company felt “comfortable with the risk” of overcladding Grenfell Tower as it had done it before on social housing blocks.

need to shoulder some of the responsibility for the outcome in order to put meat on the bones of the claim that they are/were 'comfortable with the risk.'

Edited July 21, 2020 by snowychap

[chrisp65]

Thankfully, many of the worst low balling contractors have fallen out of the industry. But there has most definitely been a whole area of the construction industry where constructors would ‘buy’ a contract, go in lower than they could make a profit. This, in the knowledge they could work the contract and either swap in cheaper items, or make claims against delays and changes caused by a lazy Client that thought D&B was the answer to all their prayers.

The thing is though, we aren’t talking about shady deals with envelopes being exchanged at night in car parks. We’re talking about a drip drip impact on the industry.

Here’s a very quick example of how the  ‘moral high ground’ plays out:

You have to tender for work, cheapest tender will almost always win. Vanishingly rare for anything else to happen. If I don’t win some tenders, my family will be sad.

The contractor contacts you and says they need (need) to swap product A for product B and they need to know that’s ok by tomorrow. On the literature put together by salesmen and aimed at contractors, they appear all but identical.

Do you 1: tell the contractor it looks ok, based on what you’ve seen in the time you’ve been given

Do you 2: tell the contractor you will need several weeks to properly research this other product and take in a couple of CPD courses and find out if they have the relevant lab tests and contact other building owners that may have experience of this product in this building and my 2 weeks research will be costing you £6,000 and at the end of that i might say I still prefer the original product.

In that answer 2 means you never work for that contractor again, and thus fail to pay your mortgage, I’m gonna stick my neck out and say the answer is 1.

And we can all pretend the product was vetted and ‘approved’.

I personally haven’t ‘approved’ any product in about 20 years. My PI wouldn’t cover it. So now we have the QS saying his PI doesn’t cover it and the other designers saying his PI doesn’t cover it. The builder sure as hell won’t have the relevant insurance.

 

[snowychap]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Here’s a very quick example of how the  ‘moral high ground’ plays out:

It's interesting that you feel the need to couch it in the above.

But still your post misses by a country mile the point that I was making.

Play one's part in the process and one should be prepared to shoulder the fall out of the result.

If one finds it difficult to do the right thing but not doing the right thing is the only option then one either doesn't do it or one faces the consequences if one's actions contribute to a damaging outcome.

 

[villa4europe]

I think a portion of it but again the person offering the alternative product did not deem that product suitable because they aren't qualified or did they accept it as suitable because they aren't qualified 

You have an "expert" suggest this material and an "expert" approve it

You think the man in between them who works out how much that material costs should carry guilt, I think its inevitable that every one who worked on the project will shoulder some guilt but at the same time I don't think the man with the money has done anything wrong