Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion

[Lurdan]

More evidence from Celotex all this week.
Inside Housing's Grenfell Diary for the week is up. Archived here. (Previous Grenfell Diaries here)

Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 19: ‘And that was intentional, deliberate, dishonest?’

It's a little longer than usual - there's been quite a lot to cover.

 

[Lurdan]

Unofficial transcript here of this weeks BBC podcast which is in the usual place.

It's another very useful take on last weeks evidence from Celotex. They haven't finished - there's another Celotex witness rescheduled for Thursday - but the main event this coming week is evidence from Kingspan. Not just the other insulation manufacturer whose products finished up on Grenfell Tower, but also the company who developed and led the strategies for getting their combustible insulation on high-rise buildings which Celotex emulated.

 

[teqniq]

 

[TopCat]

They rigged the fire test.

 

[teqniq]

Yup, they did indeed.

 

[teuchter]

It's indefensible. And there's a question about whether the BRE were aware of it or not. I don't think the enquiry has got to them yet.

 

[Teaboy]

I think rigging fire tests has been a thing for some time. I could name at least one insulated render company who also did the same. There is a fundamental problem with effectively privatising our test and certification process. Companies like BRE and BBA are commercially driven and it reflects in their decision making process.

Its not a healthy situation.

 

[teuchter]

There is a fundamental problem with effectively privatising our test and certification process.

I do hope the enquiry is going to confront this properly.

 

[Lurdan]

I do hope the enquiry is going to confront this properly.

Seems to be the plan. The Celotex and Kingspan witnesses so far have been questioned at length about their interactions with the BBA, BRE and LABC. As well as calling the manufacturers whose products ended up on Grenfell Tower (Kingspan are back all next week. Still to come: Aluglaze - combustible infill panels, Siderise - cavity barriers, Arconic - combustible cladding and Celotex's distributor SIG), the following are also scheduled for this Module :

Spoiler: from Inquiry Module 2 Opening Statement

Later in Module 2, we will hear witnesses from the testing house, the BRE, in respect of the testing to British Standard 8414 of the systems incorporating the Celotex and Kingspan insulation products and the classification of those systems.

We will also be hearing from the main certification bodies, namely the British Board of Agrément, or BBA, in respect of Arconic’s Reynobond PE 55 panels, the one certificate that pre-dated the fire , issued on 14 January 2008, and Kingspan’s Kooltherm K15 insulation products, namely five certificates running between October 2008 and November 2015.

We will also hear from Herefordshire building control, who, under the auspices of the Local Authority Building Control, LABC, provided system approval and registered detail certificates for Kingspan K15 from May 2009 onwards.

We will also be hearing evidence from LABC in Module 6, when there will be further and broader examination of the testing and certification regime in general and construction products more generally in turn.

In Module 2, we will be examining with them the role they played in the tests, how they interpolated the test results, the extent of their audit or monitoring of the manufacturers, and how each of the key certificates involved in this Inquiry came to be composed and worded as they were.

As that says there will also be a

further and broader examination of the testing and certification regime in general and construction products more generally

in Module 6.

On a different tack Inside Housing have just put up a handy timeline of the Grenfell refurbishment based on the evidence in Module 1. Archived here:

Grenfell Tower refurbishment: a timeline

 

[teuchter]

On a different tack Inside Housing have just put up a handy timeline of the Grenfell refurbishment based on the evidence in Module 1. Archived here:

Grenfell Tower refurbishment: a timeline

That's handy. What would be really interesting would be a timeline showing all the critical construction details, as presented in drawing form throughout the process.

 

[Lurdan]

This week's Inside Housing Grenfell Diary is up. Archived at this link. (Previous diaries here)
Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 20: ‘We were outed by a consultant who we then had to fabricate a story to’

(There is a little more detail about Kingspan's legal threats when the NHBC raised serious concerns about combustible insulation in this Inside Housing story earlier in the week. Kingspan threatened legal action against NHBC for raising concerns over non-compliant insulation )

The Inquiry has yet to hear what caused the NHBC to subsequently reverse it's position and issue inaccurate guidance

saying K15 could be used on high rises with various common cladding panels without even being justified by test data.

The plastic insulation sector's combination of lobbying to change the regulatory regime, and aggressive legal action if the safety of their products was challenged, was explored in a long Sky News story back in 2018

Grenfell - Britain's fire safety crisis - Sky News

It described, for example, how

Rockwool, the main producer of the non-combustible mineral-based alternative to plastic insulation (...) sent out videos in 2007 showing how their product doesn't burn and how plastic insulation does. They were sued for trademark violation and malicious falsehood. Despite the falsehood claim being thrown out the legal action tied up Rockwool for years and cost them millions of pounds.

The manufacturer who sued them was Kingspan - here's an account of the case
Chancery douses incendiary knocking campaign - marketinglaw

Kingspan's litigiousness was referred to in Celotex internal emails disclosed by the Inquiry. Rockwool could afford to defend themselves - the situation for researchers was rather different. From that Sky story :

Time after time we were told the plastic insulation industry was highly litigious, that speaking out about its fire safety was impossible, and that while the story should be told, no-one would go on camera. Eventually we found a former government scientist who agreed to talk, on condition of anonymity, about the pressures he faced. He said threats to sue him had made him unwell.

"If you've got no [legal] insurance you lose your house," he said. "It was a worrying time and they were quite famous for it - people knew this was the way they reacted." He says he doesn't think the work he did was influenced by the threats, but they had an effect: "I think perhaps more than anything else other people were silenced - by saying 'Oh, you'd better not say anything about that, look what happened to him,'" he told us.

(...)

And the week after the Grenfell Tower fire, six European plastic industry lobby groups complained in a letter to the respected publishers of a peer-reviewed paper on the dangers of toxic smoke from burning plastic insulation written by chemistry and fire safety expert Professor Anna Stec at the University of Central Lancashire. "We request that the article is withdrawn," it said. "The consequences […] are enormous and could well lead to significant consequential losses." It ended: "We feel you should consider this very seriously."

Professor Stec, who has subsequently done work on the contamination caused by the fire, has been appointed as an expert witness to the Inquiry.

 

[Lurdan]

Here's the unofficial transcript of this weeks BBC podcast which is in the usual place.

* * * * * * * * *​

While some ex-employees of Celotex and Kingspan have acknowledged that claims made for their employers' combustible insulation products were inaccurate and misleading, and that to a greater or lesser degree they were aware of this, not all of them have been willing to do so.

In this excerpt Gareth Mills of Kingspan is being asked about a 2009 certificate issued by the LABC, which stated in error that Kingspan's K15 "can be considered as a material of limited combustibility". The error wasn't pointed out and the certificate was used to market K15 for inappropriate and unsafe uses.

Spoiler: Weasel of the week

Kate Grange: Do you remember it being celebrated within Kingspan that this LABC certificate had been issued?

Gareth Mills: I know they were happy with getting an additional approval, yeah, yeah. No, yeah.

Kate Grange: Were you happy with it, as someone in the technical department?

Gareth Mills: I wasn’t a big fan of the LABC approvals because they didn’t really say a lot in them. But, you know, it wasn’t something I dealt with, had much involvement with, so I didn’t give it a great deal of thought.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: It didn’t trouble you that it was misleading?

Gareth Mills: Well, I suppose perhaps I -- you know, because I knew the full details, maybe I looked at the information a bit differently to someone who wasn’t, and was coming at it as just reading that document. I suppose I sort of maybe read it differently because I knew the surrounding information and things like that. But yeah, maybe that was a... you know, a little bit of a jump perhaps. But yeah.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: Well, I mean, I’d quite like to understand this. Did you think it was misleading or not?

Gareth Mills: It didn’t mislead me, no.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: No, no, that’s not the question I asked.

Gareth Mills: Yeah.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: Did you think it was misleading --

Gareth Mills: Well, yes, I said --

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: -- in the sense that it was liable to mislead someone who didn’t have the same degree of technical knowledge that you had?

Gareth Mills: It’s a possibility, looking back, yeah.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick: Did you think it was responsible for you or Kingspan generally to send this out to people who didn’t have the same degree of technical knowledge?

Gareth Mills: It certainly would -- I suppose in that way, yeah, it would have needed some additional explanation if you were going to use it, yeah.

 

[Pickman's model]

Thanks for all the work you've done on this Lurdan

 

[BCBlues]

Kingspan manager belligerent over fire concerns in 2008, Grenfell inquiry hears

Philip Heath said builders asking questions were mistaking him for ‘someone who gives a damn’

www.theguardian.com

Theres been some arseholes in these revelations but this Philip Heath is an utter disgrace

 

[teuchter]

Kingspan manager belligerent over fire concerns in 2008, Grenfell inquiry hears

Philip Heath said builders asking questions were mistaking him for ‘someone who gives a damn’

www.theguardian.com

Theres been some arseholes in these revelations but this Philip Heath is an utter disgrace

I reckon most folk who have worked in the building industry will have come across people like that guy.

To try and drag something positive out of this, it's at least nice to see evidence of some conscientious people within the industry trying to challenge him on the dodgy claims back then.

 

[Lurdan]

Inside Housing's write up (archived)
Kingspan manager said professionals raising fire concerns could 'go f*ck themselves', Grenfell inquiry hears

(Heath is clearly a lovely chap but even so he hasn't managed to displace Stephen Blake of Rydon and David Gibson of the TMO from the top of my own 'most puncheable' list).

 

[elbows]

Its pretty useful when that sort of shithead is also too stupid not to put their thoughts in writing at the time.

Heath forwarded this email to friends, saying: “I think Bowmer & Kirkland are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam. I’m trying to think of a way out of this one, imagine a fire running up this tower !!!!!…!!!! Any ideas…?”

I guess his feeble imagination didnt extend to his messages ending up being scrutinised if such a fire happened.

 

[Lurdan]

Its pretty useful when that sort of shithead is also too stupid not to put their thoughts in writing at the time.

I guess his feeble imagination didnt extend to his messages ending up being scrutinised if such a fire happened.

Doubtless this will be one of the 'lessons learned' for many in the industry.

 

[Lurdan]

This week's Inside Housing Grenfell Diary is up. Archived at this link. (Previous diaries here)
Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 21: 'It’s there in black and white, isn’t it? We see a complete absence of any consideration of life safety'

More evidence from insulation manufacturers Kingspan building on what we heard last week. They are back again for three days next week.

Inside Housing's Pete Apps produced a twitter thread about one implication of this week's evidence. Archived here.
It refers to a 2018 Inside Housing story about how the Government had failed to act on warnings about combustible cladding and insulation in 2014 at the same time these were being specified for Grenfell Tower. That story is archived here.

 

[Lurdan]

Here's the unofficial transcript of this weeks BBC podcast, which can be found here.
(Previous transcripts here). I should point out that I've corrected a passage at about the seven minute mark where two Kingspan employees were mixed up.

*****​

It refers briefly to Kingspan's energetic lobbying of Government. An internal report from 2007 was disclosed which stated

Kingspan Technical were heavily involved in the consultation of the English Fire Regulation Approved Document B. Out of the 250 consultation submissions Kingspan submitted 6 versions under various guises (BRUFMA, EPFA, Company and individuals).

They are still actively representing their interests. In September they made a submission to the Parliamentary Committee considering the Building Safety Bill. (Archived here.). Quoting a passage from Judith Hackitt's review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety which said that buildings of ten storeys or more were at the highest risk, they suggest that the proposed building safety regime should thus apply to these rather than to buildings taller than 18 metres (approx. six storeys) as proposed in the Bill. In plain English they would like another four floors they can cover in combustible products which produce toxic fumes if they catch fire.

They also urge a move away from focusing on the safety of individual products to testing specific assemlies of building products. They helpfully suggest that "a product labelled as ‘unsafe’ product may be entirely safe as part of a system in application.". Any resemblance to the regime Kingspan was able to 'game' for years is presumably entirely coincidental.

 

[Lurdan]

At the end of today's hearing it was announced that a member of the Inquiry team has tested positive for Coronavirus and a number of other members and support staff are going to have to self-isolate. The Inquiry was going to take a break anyway, from Thursday 17th until January 11th, but because of this development hearings are now suspended from now until then.

 

[BCBlues]

Thanks again Lurdan for the updates. I did notice this in the Grauniad yesterday, Kingspan staff being utterly useless in their jobs.

Staff joked safety claims about material used on Grenfell were 'all lies', inquiry told

Kingspan employees’ text exchange questioned insulation product’s fire performance

www.theguardian.com

 

[Lurdan]

Here's the Inside Housing write up of this morning's evidence from Adrian Pargeter, a current Kingspan director. He was asked about Kingspan's lobbying of Government after the fire in an attempt to avoid the ban on combustible materials on high-rise buildings.

In its submission to the HCLG Committee, the firm said it had evidence of “three failed large-scale fire tests” using non-combustible materials produced by Kingspan’s competitors, in order to support its argument that non-combustible materials could still be dangerous when used with certain systems. However, the inquiry heard today that these tests had been commissioned by Kingspan and were designed in a way to ensure the non-combustible insulation achieved the worst possible fire performance.

Kingspan director denies firm made ‘deliberate attempt to deceive’ MPs on post-Grenfell fire testing - Inside Housing (archived)

 

[Lurdan]

This week's Inside Housing Grenfell Diary is up
Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 22: ‘All we do is lie in here’

Although the Inquiry only sat for three days the evidence from Kingspan director Adam Pargeter was both revealing, and also unusually for these hearings, provided some rather grim entertainment as he attempted to follow the company line and defend the indefensible.

***​

Before the fire Peter Ward who does building restoration had put up a YouTube video demonstrating how combustible Kingspan's insulation was. While the fire was burning he tweeted a link to it. The next day, before the fire had been fully extinguished, Kingspan sent him a letter threatening legal action.

Kingspan issued legal threat to Twitter critic just hours after Grenfell fire

The speed of their response makes an interesting contrast with the four year delay between (according to the company line) 'realising' the fire tests they had been using to market K15 hadn't been carried out on the product they were actually selling, and withdrawing those tests.

After threats from Kingspan to sue us for defamation if we published anything about their insulation, we thought we'd have another go at burning their insulation. This video shows a stack of kingspan being burned in my woodburner - lit with a few sheets of paper from the office waste paper bin. This video shows how easily Kingspan burns and emits horrible toxic fumes. Kingspan wrongly told us their products were not involved with Grenfell Tower - they were. I'd be very happy if this form of insulation was banned from any use in buildings.

 

[Lurdan]

Here's the unofficial transcript of this weeks BBC Grenfell podcast. (The podcast itself is here).

It was pointed out this week that Gene Murtagh, Kingspan's CEO, and Gilbert McCarthy, global managing director of it's insulation businesses, were copied into the email correspondence about the 'gamed' 2018 Dubai fire test, which was conducted post-Grenfell fire on a rival company's non-combustible insulation, to support Kingspan's position in opposition to a ban on combustible materials on high-rise buildings.
In one of the emails:

I have introduced as many weak features/details as possible to ensure it has the best chance of performing poorly whilst at the same time retaining the panel modules and cavity barrier arrangement associated with all tests to date.

Reports that Kingspan have

begun disciplinary procedures and investigations of some current and former staff arising from the Grenfell Tower inquiry in Britain

presumably are not referring to Murtagh or McCarthy.

The Irish Times named Murtagh it's 'Business Person of the Month' back in March when the company reported it's 2019 profits.

Murtagh moved after share price spike to sell some of his stock, raising €5.37 million. Shares in the company have since fallen in line with the wider market, as investors consider the impact of the spread of the coronavirus on the global economy. However, analysts at German bank Berenberg said this week that Kingspan’s pullback offers a “rare entry point” for new investors.

Just before Kingspan started to give evidence at the Inquiry Murtagh, McCarthy and another Kingspan director cashed in another £6m worth of share options. The company's shares have dropped about 10% since then.

For Kingspan it has, relatively speaking, been a 'good month' for this to come out. The pandemic and brexit have kept their evidence at the Inquiry off the front pages. However the Irish Times are now asking
Is the Grenfell Tower inferno Kingspan’s Volkswagen moment?

and even Dominic Lawson in The Times is saying

It turns out that the depravity, at a corporate level, was worse even than we could have imagined.

Obviously this module of the Inquiry is far from over. In the new year we will be hearing, amongst others, from Arconic/Alcoa, the manufacturer of the combistible ACM cladding panels used at Grenfell. The excerpts of internal emails revealed in the opening statements for this module suggest that the contest for rottenest apple on a very rotten tree is still an open one.

edited to remove evidence of dumb error

 

[Lurdan]

(Grenfell United twitter link)

The article link is to this Times story (archived)

Two construction firms at the centre of investigations into the Grenfell Tower disaster will earn millions of pounds from a government drive to make homes more energy efficient. Celotex and Kingspan, which supplied combustible foam insulation that caught fire during the blaze in June 2017, are marketing their products for use in the Green Energy Grant scheme, which has earmarked £2 billion for making houses more eco-friendly.

Celotex, which supplied 95 per cent of the insulation on Grenfell, said that its range of products “provide a comprehensive thermal insulation offering” for the scheme. It is running training courses for installers seeking accreditation to carry out the works. Kingspan has set up a “dedicated green homes grant service”, including a telephone helpline, to answer questions. (...)

Both companies are vying for a share of the green homes scheme announced in August by Alok Sharma, the business secretary, under which property owners can apply for grants of up to £10,000. (...)

A government spokesperson said that the Green Homes Grant did not endorse any particular brand.

 

[BCBlues]

(Grenfell United twitter link)

The article link is to this Times story (archived)

This is disgraceful but comes as no surprise when we have a PM who is an unashamed liar. He would fit in well at Kingspan in particular. Jenrick too with his illegal activities.
This Gov't is easily the most corrupt one the UK has had to endure.

 

[teuchter]

What are they actually proposing though? That the two manufacturers are banned from any works funded by the scheme? On what basis - as punishment for actions under investigation of an ongoing enquiry? Or on the basis that they are not safe for the kinds of uses that would be involved under the green grants scheme?

If the concern is about safety then they should be banned for all building work regardless of how it's funded, and so should products from the various other manufacturers that make essentially the same stuff and market it for the same uses.

If it's as a punishment then I don't know how you'd cover that from a legal point of view.

 

[two sheds]

This is disgraceful but comes as no surprise when we have a PM who is an unashamed liar. He would fit in well at Kingspan in particular. Jenrick too with his illegal activities.
This Gov't is easily the most corrupt one the UK has had to endure.

well perhaps since rotten boroughs and the 1832 reform act

 

[Lurdan]

No surprise that Boris' "Green Industrial Revolution" should actually be a three-course meal deal for cunts with a small side order of 'greens'.

Worth recalling that Celotex, who are "running training courses for installers seeking accreditation to carry out the works" under this Green Energy Grant scheme, didn't just admit 'gaming' a large-scale fire test and using the result to make misleading claims about how their combustible insulation could be compliant with building regulations.

They also lied about the thermal efficiency of their insulation by selectively recording the results of the testing done during manufacture. That's the thermal efficiency which was the main rationale for retrofitting insulation to buildings.

Four to six measurements of thermal performance were taken every day. But only the best would be logged onto the system, the rest discarded. Internal documents described this as “a high degree of data management and manipulation” and warned that it “could be identified by an auditor if they followed the process trail”.

Inside Housing Grenfell Diary Week 19 - see also Official transcript for day 72 (starts at page 19 of the PDF).