“Not only inadequate but positively dangerous” - what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report said about fire engineers Exova

As we continue to delve through the volume on the refurbishment, let's take a look at the findings on fire engineer Exova.

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Volume Four of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report - covering the refurbishment of the tower - is very important, but also extremely difficult to summarise, as it covers dozens of parties and individual failings which blend together into an overall picture of construction sector failure.

So I’m going to approach it piece-by-piece. Last week’s post covered a critical flaw in the relevant guidance which the government sought to cover up after the fire. And now I’m going to run through some of the findings about the key players in a series of posts, starting with fire engineers Exova.

Who are Exova and what is their relationship to Grenfell? Exova, a major player in the fire safety space which has been around since 1965 and claimed “a worldwide reputation for excellence in fire safety”. They offered numerous fire safety related services, but for the Grenfell Tower job their role was to advise on fire safety aspects of the refurbishment, primarily by producing a fire safety strategy for the building as it stood, and then a plan for the refurbishment. 

The report said that appointing Exova meant KCTMO (which managed Grenfell) and architects Studio E “could reasonably have expected to have access to high-quality fire engineering advice from leaders in the field”.

The existing fire safety strategy: The initial strategy appears to have been rushed - an Exova consultant had carried out a mere two-hour site visit, with important documents unreviewed. 

The report was then completed by another consultant and reviewed by her manager. Both were in a rush to get the work done before they left on holiday. The drafting was described as “hurried” and the review “rushed, cursory and superficial and little better than a rubber stamp”.

The report contained major errors - including a misidentification of the lifts as meeting a firefighting standard. 

The panel said this work “fell well below the standards to be expected of a reasonably competent fire engineer”.

“Exova’s work on the Existing Fire Safety Strategy was poor and incomplete,” it said. “The document failed to record the condition of the building in its existing state and did not provide a reliable baseline for the creation of a fire safety strategy for the refurbishment.” 

Making a crap condition worse: In the early stages, Exova’s Cate Cooney was also asked to give an opinion on the plans to add residential units to the mezzanine floors at Grenfell which, at the time, were home to commercial premises and a boxing club. 

This was a problem in fire safety terms, because it meant a single stair would be shared between mixed-use properties (commercial and residential), which is discouraged by guidance. 

In an internal email, Ms Cooney acknowledged this, saying the plans were “making an existing crap condition worse”, but could “massage the proposal to something acceptable”.

The report accepted that by “massage” Ms Cooney meant to simply introduce changes to make it more palatable to building control rather than any “manipulation or sleight of hand”.

But it was highly critical of her failure to alert the client to her view that the changes were “making a crap condition worse”. “Given the seriousness of the concerns we would have expected Exova to have communicated them directly to the TMO and in our view, in failing to do so it fell short of the standard to be expected of a reasonably competent fire engineer,” the panel said. 

The panel added that it believed the email to be indicative of “an approach which concentrates more on obtaining building control approval than on ensuring people’s safety”, adding that it had “noticed many examples of that attitude displayed by others involved in the refurbishment”.

The outline fire safety strategy: Work on the ‘outline fire safety strategy’ required for the refurbishment fell to Terry Ashton, who was not a qualified fire engineer and had no experience of overcladding high rises. Instead, he was a former building control officer who had previously worked with the building control staff in Kensington and Chelsea who would ultimately sign the project off. 

His first draft, produced in 2012, made no reference to cladding the building - despite being aware that this was planned - and said only this with regard to external fire spread. 

“It is considered that the proposed changes will have no adverse effect on the building in relation to external fire spread but this will be confirmed by an analysis in a future issue of this report.” 

The report said that at this stage he had “no basis for expressing an opinion, even of a provisional nature, that the proposed work would have no adverse effect on the building in relation to external fire spread” and that such a statement “was bound to lead” the architects and client into thinking the building was safe. 

A second draft in October 2013 was materially the same. “The very fact that Issue 2 of the Outline Fire Safety Strategy was in substance almost identical to Issue 1 produced a year earlier is itself a ground of criticism,” the report said.

By now, much more information was available about the cladding plans and the materials which were being selected - including the combustible insulation, which was not permitted under the ‘linear’ route to compliance in building safety guidance. 

The panel said they found it “very surprising that no one at Exova recognised that the statement relating to [external fire spread] had not been properly resolved”. 

It added that the fact that it had not been directly provided to Mr Ashton was “a poor excuse” and that “a reasonably competent fire engineer” would have “drawn the matter to the attention of its client and would have sought the information needed to complete the report”. 

Further, during a peer review of the report, a colleague at Exova raised an issue relating to the escape stair which he said was not consistent with existing guidance - but that could still be accepted on the basis of first principles. 

Mr Ashton was annoyed with this amend - because he feared it would draw building control’s attention to something they might otherwise have overlooked. It said this attitude characterised Exova’s “unprofessional approach” and “revealed an approach to fire safety that we consider irresponsible”. 

A third issue of the report came out a few weeks later - again identical in nature to the others with regard to external fire spread.

The report said this meant Exova had “failed to provide any guidance on the performance standards for the external wall” which “represented a fundamental failure to provide the services for which it had contracted”. 

Further emails: Exova was never asked to provide a completed version of its fire safety strategy, given that they were not formally part of the job once contractor Rydon took over in early 2014. 

But Mr Ashton continued to be contacted by the team and offered advice, some of which related directly to the external cladding. 

When asked about the need for cavity barriers in September 2014, for example, he gave generalised advice but did not even open a data sheet he was sent listing the materials which were intended for use on the tower. The report said this was “a serious error on his part”. 

Inquiry expert Dr Barbara Lane said this email was sent at a time when “awareness of the dangers presented by combustible materials was evolving rapidly” and that “If he had opened the datasheet and obtained advice from colleagues in Warrington with specialist knowledge of materials and their reaction to fire, it is likely that he would have alerted the design team to the risks involved”.

One of the members of the design team at architects Studio E claimed that he phoned Mr Ashton at around this time to ask about the materials selected, claiming that Mr Ashton gave “pretty emphatic” assurances that the materials that had been selected complied. This is something Mr Ashton has always denied, and the report accepted his evidence. 

However, it did add that these exchanges “occurred at a critical moment in the life of the project” when “the design team was asking important questions relating to the safety of the external wall and its compliance with the statutory guidance”. 

It said this should have resulted in a warning about the risks and a notification that the outline fire strategy was incomplete in this regard. “We can see no good reason why he did not do so and are satisfied that in failing to do so he fell short of the standard required of a reasonably competent fire engineer,” the report said. 

A later email exchange, in March 2015, questioned the correct strength of cavity barrier for the gap between the external cladding and the wall of the building. 

This time, the report said that Mr Ashton’s reading of the email chain was “remarkably casual”, such that he did not notice references to ‘aluminium cladding’ and still thought it was going to be the zinc product originally specified. He said he did this because he just focused on the specific question he was asked. “Overall we were unimpressed by Mr Ashton’s narrow approach,” the report said. 

Overarching comments on Exova: The report was extremely damning of Exova’s performance, saying that its work was was “poorly resourced, casual and both incomplete and inaccurate in a number of important respects, all of which in our assessment contributed to the lack of proper attention to fire safety matters throughout the refurbishment project”.

The report said it “entirely accept that Exova was badly briefed on the project and that others… failed to take a proper interest in its work”, with KCTMO displaying “a regrettable lack of interest in fire safety and a casual attitude to its responsibilities in that regard” and lead contractor Rydon showing “a worrying lack of concern for fire safety” and “misguidedly assuming that it could rely on others”. 

However, it added that “none of that can exonerate Exova”, whose presence on the job created “a false sense of security” around fire safety. 

“By far the most serious criticism of Exova is that a final version of the much-needed Outline Fire Safety Strategy was never produced and that it failed either to draw that fact to the attention of the design team or to warn it about the potential consequences, despite having numerous opportunities to do so,” it said. “Exova’s approach was to do the minimum required at the time and, when asked for advice, to adopt a narrow and blinkered approach to the questions it was asked.”

Its stinging final conclusion was that the consultancy’s work was “not only inadequate but positively dangerous”. 

“We have therefore come to the view that Exova bears considerable responsibility for the fact that Grenfell Tower was in a dangerous condition on completion of the refurbishment,” it said.

Future coverage: This week and next, I’m going to run through Volume Four with a few more pieces like this summing up the role of the main players, because this is a (necessarily) dense part of the report which it is nonetheless important to understand.

At some point, I will do similar for the key players in the volumes one and two - as these are also extremely important and contain good detail which goes beyond the headlines.

I then have some plans for broader pieces about fire service reform, the prospect of criminal charges and the aftermath of disasters which will draw on the inquiry report but will hopefully do a bit more than simply summarise it - as the above tend to do.

And I’ll try and keep some regular pieces about housing policy coming - including one about the Conservative Party leadership race. So stay tuned - and if you can afford to, please do subscribe.

This content is not behind a paywall, but since it takes time to create and upload each piece, do please consider becoming a paid subscriber (especially if this project is something that you value, and you have the means to do so), which is either billed monthly at £3.50 or annually at £35. A paid subscriber has full access to the back catalogue of posts.

If you pay £40 or more for an annual subscription, I will send you a signed copy of my book. Or you can buy a copy here.