How can the infrastructure sector help prevent another Grenfell?

Tomorrow marks eight years since the Grenfell Tower fire – a sobering reminder of the devastating human cost of critical infrastructure failures and the vital importance of effective safety and risk management.

Our commitment as civil and infrastructure engineers to ethical practice that puts safety at the heart of infrastructure development is stated clearly in the ICE’s Code of Professional Conduct.

This commitment has always been a core principle of the ICE.

But Grenfell emphasised the role all professionals working across our sector must play in understanding and mitigating infrastructure safety risks and their ramifications.

Since the tragedy, we have been focused on improving everyone’s awareness of their role in risk management and providing them with the resources they need to develop the right knowledge and skills.

CPD systems must prioritise safety in the built environment

Best practice in safety risk management is always evolving. Professionals must keep abreast of developments in this field.

Immediately after the fire, we began working on our report, In Plain Sight: assuring the whole-life safety of infrastructure.

It was published in 2018 and recommended several measures that the engineering profession and wider sector could take to reduce the risk of similar failures.

The Swiss cheese model

It supported the Swiss cheese model of risk management proposed by eminent psychologist James Reason.

This illustrates that having several lines of defence – represented by successive slices of the holey cheese – can prevent risks, but that a failure can still occur if all the slices have aligning holes (systemic weaknesses).

The aim, then, should be to shrink these holes and to establish more lines of defence, thereby reducing the likelihood of failure.

We have produced a series of continuing professional development (CPD) modules to show members how to practically apply the Swiss cheese model.

We will also make safety risk management a mandatory CPD topic for all professionally qualified members alongside sustainable development, and ethics and professionalism.

The institution is currently defining specific requirements, with plans to share this information with members towards the end of 2025.

Industry partnerships to improve standards and transparency are vital

Since Grenfell, the ICE has worked closely with the Engineering Council and other professional bodies to raise their collective memberships’ awareness of the importance of safety risk management.

This collaboration has helped foster greater transparency in the management of critical infrastructure.

The expansion of Collaborative Working for Safer Structures UK (CROSS-UK) in 2021 to cover fire safety matters is one example of such work.

The ICE and the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) run this system, which enables professionals in the built environment sector to report their safety concerns in confidence.

Another example is the competency register for engineers who are professionally qualified to design and deliver higher-risk buildings (HRBs).

The ICE and the IStructE were granted a joint licence by the Engineering Council UK to manage the application process for the register.

Under the Building Safety Act 2022, a building that’s at least seven storeys or 18m tall and contains more than one residential unit (or is a hospital or care home) is classed as an HRB.

To be included on the HRB competency register, applicants must work to the new legal requirements and demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

The register is now open to applications.

The ICE’s next steps

While there have been improvements in safety risk management after Grenfell, there’s no room for complacency.

The landscape has changed significantly since the publication of In Plain Sight.

To keep up the momentum, the institution has established a safety risk review group, led by Past President Paul Sheffield, to re-evaluate practice in safety risk management.

This expert group gathered evidence on the relevance of the Building Safety Act 2022 and considered the final findings of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

Its recommendations will inform an updated report on safety risk management to be published this summer.

Committed to learning

There’s still work to do, and we remain committed to learning from Grenfell.

We must all take time to review and reflect on the final report’s findings, and how they will inform our approach going forwards.

We’ll keep advancing industry standards and assuring society that professionally qualified engineers are competent, that they prioritise life-long learning through CPD, and that public safety is always our top priority.