BIM4HOUSING CONTRACTUAL WORKSTREAM 09-10-2023
PAUL McSOLEY I went through all the stuff that’s in the Building Safety Act and just looked at what the definitions were of a few things to refresh myself. When you look at it, and this is all going to fee into this secondary legislation because Howell? 50secs said it very well recently for Construction News, they’re not making you build to different standards, but we’re going to make you behave to different ones. For the purposes of product safety if under normal and reasonable foreseeable conditions of use taking into account…specified for the purposes of this paragraph by construction product regulations, the product does not present any risk to health or safety of persons or if it does the risk is as low as can be compatible with using the product. That’s what product safety means.
If you look at safety critical products…it says construction product regulations may make provision for and in relation to standards for safety critical products, hence safety critical standards is the definition. It tells you in here that safety critical products are in the list that’s contained within construction product regulations…for the purposes of this schedule safety critical products means construction products which are included in a list containing construction product regulations. A construction product may be indicated in the list…if in the view of the Secretary of State the failure of the product would risk causing death or serious injury to any person and the product is not on for which there are designated standards…it basically tells you that the list contained within CPI is basically safety critical products, those things that can cause death or serious injury to persons.
The bit that’s caught everyone amiss with this is that everyone is thinking this is just fire safety related. It is not. This is the list from construction product regulations (shares screen). This is the area codes at the back, and this is what I’m assuming it’s referring to. Precast normal/lightweight/autoclaved/aerated concrete products - there’s a revelation, George. Doors, windows, shutters, gates, related building hardware, membranes, thermal insulation products, composite insulating kits. There’s loads of things in here, chimneys, flues, sanitary works because you’re carrying stuff which is Category 5 water risk and if you don’t look after them you can spread cholera or other disease which can cause risk of death or serious injury to persons, that’s safety critical. So everyone’s kind of looking at it in the fire light, there’s fire stopping and fire sealing at the bottom here, but you’re talking about water regulations and all the rest of it.
One of my biggest issues is getting people into the head space where you go every product has a function it’s supposed to do initially and the fire element is the last bit. Douglas Maddison? 5mins 5secs, brilliant guy, says when is a door not a door? He goes it’s a door that has security, if it’s a fire door, when it’s this…there’s so many functions that kit can do. it’s the same as the dampers, is it a damper that’s protecting against the smoke, is it there for fire only.
MARTIN ADIE Is this the list that they’ve come up with? Or is this a list you’ve come up with?
PAUL McSOLEY That’s inside CPR, Construction Product Regulations 2011. It tells you in here…the products which are included in list contained in the product regulations and that’s the CPR list that’s in there.
GEORGE Doors and windows.
PAUL McSOLEY Yeah, windows are dangerous because they can fall out, doors are dangerous if they don’t work. Do you remember the kid that was crushed to death by the glass mirror in a retail store? Safety critical isn’t it? The fixings. You can see that the whole change is coming. If you look at those 13 points I’ve done around…
GEORGE So that means all doors, not just fire doors?
PAUL McSOLEY I think if you look at a door which is powered it’s under the Machine Act as well because you’ve got the power stuff on it. Doors is here: doors, windows, shutters, gates. This is part of that CPR package at the back, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but it talks about the competency around general assignment of product standards and things like that. So everyone’s looking at the list of…and I’m guilty of it as well because I’ve been heavily involved with trying to get the list done around these kind of ones at the moment, but that’s just general passive fire. Really that stuff there…is flues, chimneys.
GEORGE Thermal insulation products.
PAUL McSOLEY Yeah, because if you don’t insulate something and you lean up against it and it burns you it can cause serious injury or death. I’m just putting this into perspective because when you look at the wording that was used I’m sure it was something along the lines of this - structural fires safety and other regulatory pertained hazards. I think we’ve added the fire safety in because of our unconscious bias. So I’m looking at this and going is this a structural safety issue, well that’s covered by that bit there. Pins for structural joints, structural bearings, it’s all in there because if you get this stuff wrong it all falls apart. Walls, gypsum products. We’re probably looking at it too simplistically because it’s complex, there’s a bit more too it.
GEORGE CPR relates to Regulation 7 of building regs.
PAUL McSOLEY It does. Can I just put this into context, even though these things are very similar they kind of overlap. Have a look at this one here, that was Regulation 7, adequate and proper materials appropriate for the circumstances adequately mixed or prepared, applied, fixed, used - adequate functions for which they are designed in a workmanlike manner. Number 4, this is before you get onto the higher-risk buildings…
GEORGE Before you joined we were just talking about obviously the big concern at the moment, the 1st of October is high-rise residential buildings, or high-risk, it really irritates me that they keep swapping that term. The concern I’ve got is that is that a lot of this actually, as Martin just said, really what this is about is enforcing what people should have been doing anyway which is complying with building regs. This is shining a light on the fact that people seldom are and therefore I think this is really helpful because the other thing that came out in the secondary legislation is that the clients now have to sign off that they’ve received all of the information. Now, that’s a real first because normally, I was talking to somebody from building control and he was saying what typically happens is that building control goes along to the client.
The client is briefed by the construction company to tell them that they’ve got everything because if they don’t say that then they won’t get the completion certificate. And building control aren’t going to drill into asking anymore questions because their job is to get a confirmation from the client to say that it’s complied, so nobody is actually checking. That’s what he said. This new thing saying that they’ve actually got to confirm that they’ve had the information, that’s going to be a game changer because they’ve actually got to read it, they’ve actually got to look at the O&Ms and the handover information, and I don’t think most clients do.
PAUL McSOLEY I think it depends on the client and their level of maturity…because if you’ve got a client that’s just flipping a job very briefly and getting out they won’t necessarily have the level of maturity or intelligence to understand what all of this means.
MARTIN ADIE (referring to a document displayed by Paul on screen). That’s the annex you were referring to?
PAUL McSOLEY Yeah, that’s the only thing I could find in there because what it refers to is a list in CPR 2011 and that’s the list at the back. Product areas the requirements for tabs, I’m not sure what tabs means to be honest, it will define something. That’s the list there, I’ve taken that and put it into Excel, and that was a bit underneath which talks about analysing risk which is about risk, setting the technical criteria, setting assessment methods to determine the factory control procedure. So, the 12 points that I've done for PFKG, I’ve it back out to you guys to see what's gone on, is I've got 5 point around analysing risk, how you get to the right operation of it, how you classify it, how you put it in, how the wall should interface as a system and how you install it. But then obviously this here is like a QA function assessing, so it all fits in with what this is saying, just by default I’d never read this bit before, the same logic has been applied. The list is from Annex 4. I’ve just taken it from the government website, under construction product regulations 2011.
MARTIN ADIE The two that stand out for me, gypsum products and aggregates, I just think how does that work?
PAUL McSOLEY Well, gypsum products is your walls.
MARTIN ADIE Yeah, I know, but it could easily be gypsum plaster, couldn’t it?
PAUL McSOLEY Aggregates, the thing is the problem I’ve got with this is it isn’t technical, this is health & safety law. You get people to think they’re technical and they’re not technical because technical now is technical, technical, technical, it’s ultra with this stuff as it’s so complex. You’ve got to read it as a health & safety law, you sit there and you go will it cause harm or death to an individual. Now, silica, which is in aggregates, can cause other problems, silicosis, and also it can cause burning because it’s an alkaline, and gypsum products they’ll be something around that as well, it’s the weight, the dust, whatever is in it that’s a health & safety issue. Does that make sense?
MARTIN ADIE It’s chiming quite well, Paul. We had a question come up from our procurement team saying we’ve got national agreements across the board with some of the household name merchants: Travis Perkins etc. The agreements are across the board so if anybody from our organisation says can I have a pack of this then they get a pack of that. But within the agreement there is also a little rider that says if they haven’t got a pack of that in they are allowed to substitute for a pack of the other…you get an equivalent. So the procurement team came to me and said is there anything in the new legislation that says we’re offside here. When I looked into it I had to say maybe, but I’m not going to waste my time with the new legislation, you’re actually bang outside the CDM regs, because what they’ve done by substituting a product is they’ve assumed the role of the designer. That’s in the CDM regs, let alone the new building safety. So when you order 12 of these and you don’t get 12 of these, you get 12 of something else, you are in a world of bother, it’s just going to get worse because now people are going to start checking and asking about it.
GEORGE So, TP have unwittingly taken on the role of the designer.
PAUL McSOLEY They probably have, it’s a bit like Tescos, when they send me an aubergine and I don’t like aubergines, I like courgettes, they are assuming the role of the customer. What Howell? 19mins 4secs (Construction News) said was the changes are not asking the construction industry to build to different standards, they are telling it to behave to different standards. The industry has an opportunity top demonstrate a willingness to embrace these reforms and rebuild public trust in what we do. It will not be easy or quick, but it needs to be done.
GEORGE I went to a GS1 event a week ago and there was a guy there from Fisher who make fixings and he was describing the way they’re using GS1. He said that some manufacturers, well, not manufacturers, they’re almost like distributors but they are sort of intermediary people, they will take a product. They publish their own products, but they don’t manufacturer them, and sometimes they’ll swap out one product for another product, but they don’t give it a new barcode, apparently that’s not uncommon. They may be sourcing from 2 or 3 different manufacturers across Europe and they may then choose to swap one product for another product, but because it is their product ID they’ve swapped it. Martin, you told me several years ago, when we first talked through this, about glass. You said that Saint-Gobain couldn’t tell you which of their factories the glass actually came from.
MARTIN ADIE In their head office they didn’t know, they wouldn’t know, there is no stewardship in the UK on glass. It’s hard to believe, but it’s a fact.
PAUL McSOLEY (shares screen). Under number 4, provision under three of the designated standards…construction products may make provision for in relation to designated standards for construction products and technical assessments for construction products. So provision under number 3 may include the designation by the Secretary of State of standards prepared in accordance with the regulations or the 2011 regulation, which again is that product list there. For the designation by the Secretary of State, on international standards. So things that are prepared in relation to construction product regulations the things that are done to EU harmonised standards or international standards, or EU harmonised standards, international standards be designated standards.
The only thing with that is that when you look at Regulation 7 you can use CPR, you can use harmonised, you can use ISOs, there’s other routes to comply on actually how it is safe to do the buildings. So nothing is really changing, this is just reinforcing it. The one that was really interesting was mandatory reporting. Mandatory reporting, is it under the HRB one? Yeah, I’ll get that back up quickly. Regulation 32. It tells you here what the designations are.
MARTIN ADIE Yeah, we got involved with the feedback sessions, I think one of your guys did as well. It ties in with what you were saying earlier, George, the MD was saying the questions he was being asked by PA Consulting, they didn’t know the difference between an high-rise and high-risk either, they were very confused…so they got off to a great start just asking these questions about what do you think about this, that and the other. Our MD was saying this all needs to take care of the stuff that goes on during design and development.
PAUL McSOLEY It tells you here the information that it talks about, this is going to further reinforce it.
MARTIN ADIE There’s a guidance document that might help. The discussion with PA consulting, we were saying let’s not just focus on what goes on on-site, because that’s what the whole industry does, but what goes on before we get to site. it was a whole new way of thinking to these people, they’d got it split into two basically, in occupation and during construction. So to try and influence that, and this os only a few weeks leading up to the October 1st deadline, and get the thinking changed was almost impossible. (shares screen). Where it will get interesting, and we were going through this on Friday last week, there’s the building safety occurrence definitions, structural failure and spread of fire and smoke and that must be reported. Anything that’s likely to result in death or harm.
GEORGE Does it say what level of detail you need to report?
MARTIN ADIE Yes. You must report faults you discover in the design plans, that’s a source for conflict. We don’t like your design, we’re going to tell the Regulator. Anything that gets reported to RIDDOR has to be duplicated as a mandatory occurrence report, hat’s new one. There’s the detail of what you submit, George. And after you’ve submitted the report they’ll be back in touch to say yea, good enough, or we need more or…
GEORGE So does it require you to say where that particular product was used? Because mandatory occurrence reporting doesn’t specifically say it’s about a product, does it?
MARTIN ADIE Any risk would be a better way to describe it, it’s potential.
GEORGE So once you know that there is a risk…
PAUL McSOLEY (shares screen). It says here examples must be reported, defective building work including defective person scheme work that has been done as part of the wider building work. Fire safety issues likely to result in the spread of fire. The use of non-compliant products or incompatible compliant products in the construction of the building. Inappropriate on incorrect installation of construction products. Product failure against specification and claimed performance. So when you look at it you go use of non-compliant products or incompatible compliant products, I’m really pleased this has been done in this wording because basically it backs that up, that is your mechanism. And if you don’t follow that mechanism.
MARTIN ADIE One thing we picked out, you see that competent person scheme, we didn’t understand that when we first read through it. Say you’ve got a guy putting in some fire stopping and he’s third-party accredited, a member of a scheme that makes sure he’s trained and competent, that doesn’t mean you still don’t report, you can’t report something that you see. You still have to, whether they’re a member of it or not.
PAUL McSOLEY There’s a difference between being incompetent and competency.
MARTIN ADIE Well, even if they’re incompetent you’ve got to report it, but if they’re competent you’ve still got to report it if you see something that is defective.
PAUL McSOLEY What I mean is you can have someone who is FIRAS accredited third-party for installing fire stopping for pipework, but that doesn’t mean they’re any good at dampers, does it? I’ve got a flight simulator and I can fly A380s on a computer. I wouldn’t put me in the cockpit though.
MARTIN ADIE Did you hear the story about Max Verstappen, the race driver. He told Red Bull he’d win the next Japanese Grand Prix before they signed him up, and they said how do you know? He said I win it every time on X-Box. And apparently the simulation is that good now that it’s not dissimilar. And he won it. When he won his first Grand Prix he didn’t have a driving licence, but he could drive a Formula One car.
PAUL McSOLEY the thing that makes me laugh, there’s an analogy here as well that when all this was kicking off, people doing training comparing this to the Road Traffic Act, I still sit here and go it’s nothing like the Road traffic Act. It’s not the same thing, like you get caught for speeding, I don’t think the comparison is right. This is a health & safety piece of legislation, not a Road Traffic Act, it’s not the same thing.
GEORGE I think it’s also that I’d have thought the Traffic Act would be quite explicit, you’ve either gone over 70 or you’ve not. Whereas in this the number of ways that you can fall foul of it are huge.
PAUL McSOLEY What I’m saying is with the Road Traffic Act is that if you’ve got to do 80 miles an hour to save yourself from crashing and killing someone you can do that. I’m sure it doesn’t say someone’s made a mistake, if you slow down you’re dead but if you speed up you’ll survive, oh, but I can’t break the speed limit. You’re gonna break the speed limit because I think that is a surely acceptable thing, it will say something in there about you can do that if your life depends on it. So when you look at this there is so much entrapment because this thing here around the use of non-compliant products or incompatibility of products, let’s just refresh ourselves on Section 24 of the Building Safety Act. A person commits an offence if they provide false or misleading information to the Regulator. So look at how these two work together, if you don’t mandatory report it they’ve got you.
GEORGE Could I just build on that. One of the things that I’ve picked up, the guy that you put me in touch with, Paul, on LinkedIn, Adrian I think, he’s a building control specialist and he’s just moved from the council to being…he’s very, very thorough. He brought this up and the fact is it’s unlimited fines and 2 years on prison. It occurred to me if you’ve got a set of O&Ms, Martin, and they’re not as-built, which very few O&Ms are as-built, then unless you explicitly say that they are as designed and not as-built then you’re proving misleading information.
PAUL McSOLEY I think you might be right. The point is that if you do lab work and you get involved in that kind of shenanigan, everything is highly regulated down to fumigation, depending on hydrogen peroxide, formaldehyde, pipe work, PIBs, all of the things that you’ve got to do to make those labs safe. Pressure regimes, is the wall going to hold back 2-3000 pascals of pressure, how can you prove it, what testing has been done, what seals, it’s all there because pathogen control is life safety critical. Pathogen control supersedes, if you had a fire in a CL4 lab you shut the submarine door and you leave them in there and everyone gets burnt to death. I don’t mean that to be facetious, you burn the damn thing out because with the heat that’s in there nothing is surviving anyway. And that’s the things that were going on because you can’t run sprinklers in there because you’ve got an effluent treatment tank, you’ll overflow it.
Basically this is saying when you look at it all together everyone is going on about fire and this isn’t referring to fire, this is all referring to safety critical elements, which is your water regulations, if you get that wrong people can get legionnaire’s, back contamination and it can cause massive issues. Drainage systems, sanitary ware, because what’s in everyone’s effluent isn’t from public to be walking around in, we learnt that back with Bazalgette, you’ve got to get rid of it. None of these things are changing, it’s just a case of they need us to behave differently around them, personally I’ve learnt don’t think it’s all about fire safety because it’s not, it’s about all of it. That’s an interesting dynamic for me.
GEORGE I remember Martin saying a couple of years ago that really what you’re doing now is treating all buildings as being something that you’ve got to track.
PAUL McSOLEY It’s not just about high-risk, it’s about all buildings and if you’ve got a process that works in a high-risk building. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me blowing smoke out of all of us, the 12 points, what you put together on the thing originally, every time I see that diagram floating round I just smile because people are using it and you’ve got to love that. Anything I do on lecturing, I always mention you George…because of the effort that’s gone into getting this whole Bim4housing set up with all the black box, it’s important. That mechanism works as far as I can see for everything, i can’t comment on facades because it’s inherently more of a different type of system than it is for walls and floors, it’;s got different things involved with it, but actually when you look at things like water regulations the same principle applies. Risk category of building, risk category of space and category 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 risks that you’ve got in the building categories or categories of systems, it’s the same principle, how does it operate.
GEORGE One of the things I’m looking at the moment, I could do with both of your feedback on this, is how does this relate other than new build construction to handover. What I mean by that is Regulation 38 applies when you’re handing over a project. That project may not be a new build, it may be when something is rewired, it’s anything that touches on building regs I believe.
PAUL McSOLEY There’s exemptions. (shares screen). Exempt work, something about circuits and things like that. In relation to an existing fixed building service, which is not a fixed internal or external lighting system…
GEORGE It’s pretty basic though, isn’t it? Replacement of an external door. So if, for example, somebody is replacing the fire doors in an existing building I think that would fall under building regs. And as I understand it what happens is that what happens is the requirements for the information is defined at handover and it’s at that point that the client needs to confirm that they’ve received everything. But what they’ve then got to do is it then falls under something called a Fire Safety Order. I’ve asked fire people and they say Regulation 38 only applies at project handover. I said surely if there is a requirement for the client to confirm that they’ve received the information there must be some responsibility on them to keep it and maintain it. They pointed me to another part of the legislation where it says that when you pass from one responsible person to another, I’m interpreting that as being from let’s say appointing an FM contractor, then both parties have got to confirm that they’ve got all of the information that they need. I’m just checking my understanding. Would you agree with that, Martin?
MARTIN ADIE I think so, it would be difficult to argue against looking at what Paul’s just thrown up there. But you’d be pushing against closed doors because most people won’t know that.
GEORGE No, exactly. There’s a project that we’re just starting work on at the moment where Balfour Beatty are the main contractor and Equans are taking over the asset management and I think there are still some big gaps between that handover. I think what it’s doing, nobody is going to get this right immediately, but what it might do is shine enough of a spotlight on it that will encourage people, to be frank, like you, who want to see it improved. The problem often is that you and Paul, you’ll be advocating for this within your own organisations and people will be saying, well, we’ve never had to do that before. If we can articulate that in a simple way without being threatening, because you don’t want to overstep the mark, we need need to encourage people along a path rather than…
MARTIN ADIE Yeah, you can’t play hardball because there’s too many things in the air in terms of no one has experienced this, the Regulator’s not going to be that sure and will be busy with other things, it will be new to everybody involved. We’re all going to have to find out together.
PAUL McSOLEY My biggest concern is that what will happen is that until the first prosecutions occur no one will wake up and smell the coffee on this. Or what you’ll probably get is a slow burn where people don’t realise that all of this Act, if you look at the work that’s involved in a job and you look at things functionally, you’re going to potentially get yourself prosecuted for using the wrong materials, the wrong water regulations come into it, the wrong chemicals in the system, before you even get to the level of fire safety element that kicks in later on because that’s got to be functionally correct.
GEORGE So therefore the processes…I’m just stepping back a minute because one of the things I’m struggling with is how do you relate a specification to a design solution, because when most people are producing specifications, they are using software like NBS Chorus which typically generates a 2,000 page PDF document that is quite holistic, there’s a lot of things in it. And therefore for us to be able to say what was the specification of that damper that was used, how can we break out that so that you’ve got a direct match between the spec…maybe I’m just trying to do something too hard scale.
PAUL McSOLEY No, let’s have a laugh with you. So if I got to spec 2003 fire stopping you’ll go, I’m not saying this is what it was, if I go 2013…
MARTIN ADIE George, what you’re saying there, this is the difference between a spec and a design, one can’t exist without the other but they are two different things.
PAUL McSOLEY I think that summarises it (holds up a handwritten note on screen).
GEORGE So, in 2003 you’ve got fire stopping by Hilti and then 2013 you’ve got fire stopping by contractor. Could you explain the significance of that?
PAUL McSOLEY The significance is, and this is where it’s all shot to bits. (shares screen). I bring back up that and we go to Part 3 general, that’s everything that’s required to specify one pipe at one wall for fire stopping. But you don’t need to, you can do by Hilti, in the old days, or now you can go by contractor. And that’s the problem with NBS and NES. The play on words is that you can’t specify something this complicated, that’s the issue, so when it comes down to things like in the high-risk buildings if you go to classification…a change of any construction product or building element to be used in or on a proposed higher-risk building such that its replacement is of a lower classification under the reaction to fire classification, with the meaning of that one there. So it’s all about change, it’s when you change, and this is where they messed up because it’s not about reaction to fire, it’s about resistance to fire and reaction to fire. So they’ve messed this up a little bit because they’re looking at it on the basis, again, of cladding (this is how I’m reading this).
So if you change something where it’s a lower classification under resistant with the fire classification with the meaning…let’s see what it says in Regulation 2(6). I need to see what it says in there, but if it’s talking about reaction to fire classification hopefully they’ve got this listed right in there because if you take a door in a hospital, it could be in a store room with bandages in it and that HTM could say it is a vision panel so you can see in the room, and actually you want to protect the hospital from smoke from that room, you want to insulate everything in the room including the door and it’s going to have the integrity as well, plus the W for the glass pouch and nothing spreads. You get the same bandage storeroom and put it in a commercial office, the one in the hospital might be sprinklered as well, you go into the office and it’s probably got an E-category and no sprinklers because of the height of the building.
So if you get it wrong originally and you’re going up do you need to report it? if you’ve got it wrong originally and it’s massively over-classified , which is what everybody is doing, especially in the damper market, I want EIS C10000 and I want it all, this things enormous, how are you going to fit that in the building? And you go what does it need to be, imagine the rows you are going to have with that. So there’s two parts of entrapment that’s going on. You can see how all of these things are linking together, from BSA to this, and I’m only picking on the bits that I think relate to products that are pertinent to me, the rest of it I’m not really worried about how you pass information between people. Let someone else worry about that, I just want to make sure it’s right for where you’re putting it. But it’s things under notifiable change that really got me as well. Notifiable change, if it’s of a higher classification you’ve still got to notify and you’ve gone from lower to higher. So they’ve got you both ways, going from higher to lower is a major, lower to higher is a minor, but you’ve still got to notify them.
I love this one here. A change to the number or dimensions of any opening in any wall, ceiling or other building element for any pipe, duct or cable. Checkmate. When people say what’s the risk, the risk of what? Doing something wrong and then trying to conceal it? Because that’s misleading and that’s a criminal offence. What’s the risk of it going wrong, will it cause harm to people? Possibly will, possibly won’t, but the bottom line is that we’ve all got systems in place now when these seals are done on site they’re recorded in a system like Boris or other where if that person has done their job thoroughly because they understand all the products, if it’s even like a millimetre out or a foul shy are you reporting it as not being in line with how it’s classified? Because if you are then there is no risk that’s low, medium, it’s all high because you’re going to declare it yourself anyway. I don’t think you can hide from this. Someone said to me it’s not been put together very well, I’m going…apart from the fact they’re using reaction to fire rather than reaction or resistance to fire which is what I think they should be saying, I think it’s pretty much a done deal, you’re not getting away from this.
GEORGE Do we know who’s authored it?
MARTIN ADIE Some of the health & safety seminars I attended, there was a lot of reference to a group of civil servants at DLUCHC who put it together. They’ve been very, very busy on it and there was a lot of them on it.
PAUL McSOLEY This has been helpful for me because I’m only looking at the bits I’m looking at and it’s good to get other people’s…
MARTIN ADIE What you said chimed with me, Paul. I’ve been looking at mandatory occurrence in isolation almost, and then I started talking to people who’ve been looking at change control and you can see how the tow are linked. There’s other things that feed, the summary of the day was quite good there, you’re not going to get away from this.
PAUL McSOLEY There’s no hiding from this, but the interesting thing for me is that it’s not fire safety relatable, or a very small fraction is. It’s water regulations. You’ve got to laugh because one of the biggest things on the CPR is autoclave concrete. No disrespect, you’ve got people going out doing surveying and they’re surveying this with gap gauges like it’s applicable to that, because it’s not. This is the issue that actually some of the surveyors haven’t got competency around that type of concrete trying to understand what they’re looking at, gap gauges is not right because you can’t tell if it’s bonded still on the inside. I see Mark’s out there in the ether, he’s no longer working for Bouygues.
GEORGE Yeah, I’ve asked him what he’s doing and he said he’s just taking a bit of time to work out what he’s going to do. I suspect he’s already got something.
MARTIN ADIE It’s becoming quite an interesting phase, everybody got to October 1st and let out a big sigh of relief thinking, oh, we got there and it will all sort itself out, but there’s still a lot of learning and understanding to be done here. Again Paul said it but without sort of saying we’re the only ones who do understand it, I think talking to colleagues within the company there’s a lot of understanding there but it’s not where we are, and we’re still spending 1 1/2 hours every Monday going what about this? Oh I don’t know.
GEORGE I went to an ASFP event, association of passive fire, 3 or 4 weeks ago and I was introduced to the director from DLUCHC and he was very interested in what we’ve done in Bim4housing and he’s asked me specifically to send him over the information that we did for the golden thread. I haven’t yet done that, but I must. He seemed very, very bothered and he was frustrated that some of his people…he was surprised about the level of information, the 12 asset types that we did the deep dive on and the suggestions that we’d brought out of the Golden Thread Initiative, he’d not seen any of that and he was disappointed that he’d note seen it. That was encouraging that he was bothered enough to make the point. And then he did his presentation and it was very, very good and he grew up in a council flat that had mould so he’s very passionate about making it work.
CHAT
Martin Adie