Grenfell Tower
In 2017, as I was flying in a Tiger Moth to Normandy to commemorate the D-day Landings, I was unexpectedly choked. North of London, we had flown into a thick layer of smoke, which was issuing from the Grenfell Tower Disaster (photo). The experience was less horrific than the event, which was a catastrophe both for the victims, and also for the construction industry. Through my career I have witnessed the progressive tightening of planning legislation and building regulations, and a reduction in the number of SMEs in the sector. Where I had known the institutions; both educational and professional, to possess virtues of egalite and fraternite, I have seen them have retreat from social functions, and advance in their roles as guarantors and enforces of standards. Grenfell has significantly catalysed and accelerated these changes, leading to the new Building Safety Act. This expanding policy regime is leading to a tyranny of consultants, which makes it ever more difficult for any individual to hold a complete picture of a project in their mind. I ask; how is this buck-passing positive for the joined-up oversight of projects, and therefore their safety? This exact question is the outcome of the Grenfell Enquiry.
Following the Grenfell Inquiry, a government task-force was established to investigate standards and competencies in the architectural profession. In the UK the title Architect is regulated, but the function of designing buildings is not. CIAT is a Chartered Professional Body that sits alongside the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Why Joe Bloggs with a laptop is also allowed to design buildings in the UK is a fair question, but it was the qualified architect of the Grenfell refurbishment was found to lack the required technical knowledge to safely design and oversee the project. The UK Government has now announced that the ARB themselves, who oversaw the culture of incompetence that gave rise to Grenfell, are to head the taskforce; ostensibly, surely, to determine their own failings. There is, a perhaps unfounded feeling amongst technologists, that the architects will use this opportunity to crush us; their better qualified, more technically experienced, potential usurpers.