¶ CROSS UK Fire Safety Importance
Hello everybody , welcome to the Fireside Show . Today I have a pleasure to talk about a very important project that for many years is changing the landscape of the UK-based fire safety engineering , and that is CROSS UK . I'm joined by Neil Gibbons and Peter Wilkinson , who are the only two people who know the contents of the reports submitted to CROSS .
They are the first line of verification when you submit your inquiry to CROSS .
They are the first line of verification when you submit your inquiry to CROSS and then a lot of things happen to the inquiry and , as you can imagine , we will discuss all those steps in details how cases are reported to CROSS , what CROSS does with them and how CROSS makes sure that the outcomes of your worries do reach the general public .
I think is a fundamentally very interesting model , a very needed thing .
There is a lot of stuff happening in our industry and you know I'm very into no bullshit policy and in this podcast you won't find that , but in the real world there's a lot of weird stuff happening and we need vessels like Cross UK to help us talk about them , to allow us to discuss them , allow to indicate them and perhaps change them for better .
So I highly appreciate the work done by Cross UK . In the show notes to this episode you can find links to their website . You can find the recent reports .
I highly encourage you to become a reader of Cross UK , to sign up to the newsletters , to see what these people are up to , to see what interesting stuff comes out from Cross and perhaps one day become a reporter if you see something worth sharing with others . But at this point , let's just hear about what's Cross UK all about .
But at this point , let's just hear about what's Cross-UK all about . Welcome to the Firesize Show . My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host . This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants . Ofr is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy .
Its globally established team has developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise , with colleagues working across the world to help protect people , property and environment . Working across the world to help protect people , property and environment .
Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants , the business has grown phenomenally in just seven years , with offices across the country in seven locations , from Edinburgh to Bath , and now employing more than 100 professionals .
Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society , applying the best research experience and diligence for effective , tailored fire safety solutions .
In 2024 , ofr will grow its team once more and is always keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on fire safety futures this year , get in touch at OFRconsultantscom . Hello everybody . I'm here joined by Neil Gibbons from CROSS . Hey , neil , hello . And Peter Wilkinson , also from CROSS UK . Hey , peter .
Hello Wojciech , Great to meet you .
We're going to talk about the mission and some of the technicalities of your organization . Cross UK apparently extends to collaborative reporting for safer .
The mission and some of the technicalities of your organization , cross UK , apparently extends to collaborative reporting for safer structures , hopefully not just in UK but worldwide , and I know that for some years fire is a big part of Cross . In your calls for reports and everything you always highlight that you can report fires and structures .
Was it always the case you ?
always highlight that you can report fires and structures . Was it always the case ? Cross was founded in 2005 by the structural engineers . We're quite late to the party bringing fire expertise , but we've been receiving reports for three years now .
Might seem longer for people that have been picking up all of our press releases and our pressures to try to get people to respond to us , but yes , just three years .
I mean our origins go back to the mid-1970s when the Institution of Structural Engineers and Institution of Civil Engineers came together to form a standing committee on structural safety in Committee on Structural Safety and I think one of the key moments that led to that initiative was the Ronan Point disaster in East London , which was a gas explosion in a 22-storey
tower block that led to the partial collapse of that only two months after it had opened and unfortunately four people died in that and 17 were injured in that event and it really did prompt soul-searching from a structural engineering point of view .
I think it's worth reflecting on that because it was the tragedy at Grenfell Tower that really spurred the initiative to spread into fire safety as well .
It's interesting Roland Point had the long lasting impact . You know , the progressive collapse of buildings and the way how we design structures in the modern world . Progressive collapse of buildings and the way how we design structures in the modern world . So , unfortunately , as many things in fire , especially they often come from tragedies .
So here the organization is not to discuss tragedies , it's to prevent them . So let's talk about the current mission of CROSS , like what's the overarching goal of having such an organization that you're having ?
Well , ideally , grenfell shouldn't have happened , should it ? Cross would have been working as it has been for structural engineers ? If it had been working for fire and somebody would have said I really don't think we should be using this incredibly combustible material on the outside of these buildings , what would happen if that caught fire ?
Oh , by the way , it does happen . It happened in malmo , it happened in the middle east . They thought about it in this country and certainly didn't react to it yeah , you asked what , what , what is our mission ?
what , what , what are we about ? And and really , we had a . We had a rebrand when we relaunched in 2021 , so you mentioned our current acronym , which is collaborative reporting for safer structures , but our original name same initials , but it was confidential reporting and it's that it's that term confidential . That's really important .
So we are an entirely voluntary scheme , but because of the confidential way that we deal with the issues that are reported to us , um , we feel it's invaluable to encourage people to tell us about issues that they've found or , um , hopefully , they've been able to solve , and our mission is to share these learnings with the rest of the construction sector , wherever
that might be around the world .
So let's talk about the process . What type of repos or what types of information is fit to issue a cross report .
If someone sees something or experiences something and thinks that really shouldn't have happened , or if that happens again , we need to get in front of it . We need to learn from what has gone wrong . It's very hard to defy . We encourage people to read cross reports to get a feel of how the organization operates .
We founded on a system that was built for the American aviation sector when their pilots were seeing things go wrong but couldn't tell anybody about it because they'd have been dismissed . They would never have got work again . So the confidentiality part of it to protect those people think they've got something to share .
Any issue regarding fire or structural safety , where something's gone wrong that perhaps wasn't expected or a standard doesn't appear to be fit for purpose or people are making the same mistake all of the time and they need to learn about this .
These are issues that people should learn about as an individual and can possibly be used by regulators , standards creators , enforcers everyone to take the appropriate action to stop things happening again .
Does it have like a minimum impact , that it has to have like , or you can literally submit anything and your team will evaluate that .
You can literally submit anything . We do have some well , we'll talk about some example reports a bit later , I'm sure but we have some really quite substantial and weighty reports that are submitted to us from very clever people who are sharing some quite complex issues with us .
But the other end of the spectrum , we can have some real simple issues , such as inappropriate fire stopping in a compartment wall , which might seem like quite a mundane issue .
But when you take all these issues together and we collect statistics on issues that are reported to us , then these little things add up to be significant problems that we need to be reporting back on and telling the government about , telling industry , about telling the standards makers about . So no , there's a whole range of issues that are reported to us .
Nothing's too small and nothing's too big .
I'm asking that because when I was going through the database and there's , like the moment that we're recording , there's 99 under fire keyword you can essentially see some really big things like general issues with CLT or mass timber , like it's an entire industry , and then , as you said , fittings or simple detailing that can perhaps lead to bad outcomes .
So it was first , for me it was interesting , that it's not just law requirements , it's not just the codes and standards , it's also the built environment , to be honest , everything that we do with our buildings , from building them up also to the way how do we use and maintain them right .
Absolutely All throughout the the building life cycle , from conception , design , through construction , commissioning , occupation uh , even got to think about demolition and the end of the building's life cycle as well . Um , but you're right .
We do receive reports from the the widest variety of people who are involved in that built environment , whether they are engineers , designers , academics , those who are involved in cutting-edge research , right through to building owners , building managers and the enforcing authorities and insurers who have a financial investment in building .
I must say that , looking at the model of your company a thing that immediately came to my mind and perhaps I'm very nasty for the Polish building market but if we had a thing like this in Polish market , it would be no one manufacturer issuing hundreds of reports on his competition , on how bad their products is , and vice versa . How do you feel to that ?
That's a really interesting observation because we have an ethos within CROSS which is a no-blame ethos . Our reports are all about promoting the learning , promoting the good practice , and we really go to great lengths to make sure that there is no blame on any particular party with the reports that we publish . But yeah , that was a very good observation .
And Neil , is it something that's consistent to the life of organization ? Or you perhaps have went through some times where someone perhaps went too far and this had to be rethought Because , I mean , you're touching very sensitive subjects in those reports .
Well , peter and I are the only two people that see the raw report . We're the only people that know who's reported and we look at who is reporting to us and sometimes you would say , well , they would say that , wouldn't they ? They're definitely coming from a direction and we can filter those things out .
We can speak back to the reporter if necessary , but we certainly wouldn't portray a bias . We wouldn't take reports from the concrete industry pointing the finger at the timber industry , without of course , it needs to be a real issue , and we're not the end of the trail because we might be the gatekeepers that let things in .
But once we expose it to our expert panel , if the reporter is telling us a load of rubbish , the expert panel will feed that back and it may not get published or it might be a major to change , just to reflect the core learning .
Tell me more about the expert panel . So you are the gatekeepers . The report is issued by anonymous reporter . You know who that is ? Because you received the submission and I guess it has to be signed . But from that moment you anonymize it and if you think it has some merit , what happens later with the submission ?
So there are 72 steps approximately in processing a cross report from receipt to publication . It is quite complex to make sure that we end up with something that reflects the learning that's been shared with us , is accurate and safe , maintaining the confidentiality , and is likely to be easy to read to the intended audience .
So we put a lot of effort into making sure that we distill the number of words down to the minimum . We use appropriate language for the professions that are involved . We use drawings , and that's quite difficult . We have to adapt because we can't share photographs that give away locations or anything that would identify something that shouldn't be exposed .
It's a very , very detailed and challenging process . It takes quite a time , but we think at the end of it you've got a safe , credible product . A report can be relied upon to be independent , factual and worthwhile .
And whilst it is incredibly detailed and there are lots of steps , it does boil down to six key steps . So you mentioned , wojciech , about the reporter submitting a report . Well , that's really easy for them to do . They can do it on our secure website . We just ask a few questions .
¶ Ensuring Transparency in Reporting Process
And whilst all our work is anonymized we don't accept anonymous reports we do want the reporter to tell us who they are and what industry they're in so that we can verify that it is a genuine report that's being presented to us .
But , as Neil said earlier , there's only the two of us that ever know the identity of the person who's submitted a report to us , because we are the very first part of the process and our role is to anonymize the report , and it's not just taking out names , it's also that de-identification , so making sure that no , no one can identify the project that's being
talked about or any particular aspects of of a product or things like that . So so we start that process off by the anonymization and we also edit the report to make sure it's clear , and then we send reports off to our expert panel and we have a very well-developed expert panel on the fire safety side . They're all volunteers .
I think there's about 20 in our panel at the moment that come from all areas within the fire sector and they come together on an entirely voluntary basis to give their expertise to enhance our reports .
That's a two-stage process , passing these reports via the panels , so we receive their comments , we refine the report , send it out again for them to add any final comments to them . Then the next stage of the process is a very important one . It's a legal review .
The anonymized report goes to again it's a legal firm in London who provide their services completely free of charge , make sure there are no concerns with publishing the report .
We then share the final anonymized report with the reporter just to make sure that see if they've got any comments , make sure that they're happy with how we've interpreted their report , and then we publish it .
The report is always published first of all on our website that's the best place to see all our reports and then , a short period of time after the report is published , all the information that's on our system relating to the identity of the reporter is deleted .
And that's also very important because we want to make sure that reporters are completely confident that they can do that without any comeback If they want to tell us something that's happened in their business .
There's no way of identifying the reporter with the issue , and we feel that's one of the best ways of encouraging more reporting so that we can all benefit and all learn from , from , from these , uh , these issues . So that that's our process in a nutshell and and it seems to work really well .
It's a tried and tested system sounds like a lot of work . One thing that immediately comes to my mind and who's paying for that ? Because you're not charging the reporters , you're not charging the listeners . How do you maintain the financial background of the organization ? Was it independent ?
Until Dame Julie Thaki suggested that Kroshubic badly defied her . It was paid for by the institution of structural engineers , civil engineers and a very small payment from the health and safety executive .
When the government decided that they were going to sponsor and back all of Dame Judith's recommendations , the relevant government department let a contract to CROSS to support its expansion and strengthening . So we devised the new website and we expanded it to FHIR and that was paid for by public money from government .
So this is like a completely independent body , with engineers and the UK population being the benefactors and the users of it .
That's a very , very , very interesting model , completely reliant on the goodwill of the expert panels , who spend several hours in a month looking at reports that we share with them , and the legal company Clyde Co will give their time pro bono to make sure that we don't end up exposing anyone or end up in court .
Fantastic , and I know that
¶ Global Expansion and Safety Oversight
also . Cross is not just UK . Now it's expanding to Australasia and the US . How does that expansion work and do you see benefits also for the UK centric point of view ? Or you simply want to have a global organization that does the same job regardless of your geographical location ?
Well Cross has expanded . It's currently operational in the United States and Australasia , so that's Australia and New Zealand , but in those two jurisdictions it's purely a structural safety reporting system , so it uses the same model , but just a single discipline .
We would very much like to expand fire into those regions as well , and that's something that we are working on behind the scenes . We just need to be able to establish the expert panels in those local areas , because we have the website , we have the infrastructure to make it happen .
We just need to recruit and help to manage the teams of volunteers who would operate in those areas . But it's developed a nice model that can be , in theory , rolled out to any number of jurisdictions around the world , and I can see great benefit in learning from different regions of the world and sharing that information internationally .
It makes a lot of sense , doesn't it ?
Well , neil just said in the introduction that fires of claddings have happened in the Middle East and elsewhere . You didn't have to . Well , you also had one big in KB for Grenfell . But technically , if this was a network operational worldwide , there's a greater chance someone will pick such a problem in general rather than relying on a smaller part of the world .
I also wonder about processing those . I have no idea who's in the expert committee . I have no idea if you shared it , but it's regardless . I wonder , like , how do you judge if something is just a part of you know scientific or professional discussion and what a part of you know scientific or professional discussion and what's an issue ?
Now , because sometimes some people can show a specific issue oh , this is a big problem when in reality it's just about product performance or how do you apply the product or where is it fit and on the other hand you also probably should not be judging oh yeah , this solution is much better than that solution In Poland .
Apologies to my colleagues again , but in Poland there is this never-ending battle between ethics people , you know , the police , tyrant people and the mineral wool people , and I mean it's like in a lens you can see this type of endless , endless fight . So how does the expert panel , how do you judge whether something truly is an issue for the safety ?
And something is just a part of the discussion .
I suppose it's about having the right minds within our panel and having the broad expertise . We're very fortunate that both Neil and I you can probably see by the grey hair we're quite experienced in the profession .
So we've been able to draw on contact from many years of working in the profession to draw together our panel and it's all publicly available on the website the panel members . But we have got experts from lots of different areas within the fire sector and it's that combination of views that gives us that , that kind of clarity , I think .
But I mean , you were talking about different aspect of the industry who probably have a bit of a oh , oh , how do I describe it ? A grudge , a grudge , that's the way of describing it . I have a grudge with other aspects of the sector . Well , because we have that no-blame culture , that kind of collaborative ethic , we want to be quite proactive .
So if we receive a report that criticizes a particular , well , we'll probably come on to an example later where we've got a report about steel stud work , particularly the light steel frame and how it's tested , and there was reference in one of the reports to a guidance from the Steel Construction Institute .
Well , that presented a great opportunity for us to discuss that with the Steel Construction Institute . Well , that presented a great opportunity for us to discuss that with the Steel Construction Institute .
Give them an opportunity to contribute to some of the wording that was published alongside the reports and open up some pretty good quality dialogue so that we all know where we stand and we all benefit from that learning . So I think being proactive and involving those sectors is also very beneficial .
It goes back a bit to that word culture as well , doesn't it About what we're here for and what people expect from Cross ? They don't expect us to be slagging off anybody or anything . They expect us to be factual and professional and sharing something that makes sense .
The longer that I'm listening to you , the more this model makes sense , because I think everyone has a need and everyone benefits from independent body where you can just report when you think things are really going bad .
One another thing that comes to my mind when thinking about the entire ecosystem of Cross and what your organization is doing there must be quite a psychological cost perhaps for you know , exposing something or issuing a report .
I can assume in many cases people would be doing a particular solution until they realize that it doesn't work or it doesn't apply or it should have been replaced . But it doesn't mean they've stopped doing that . Perhaps they were continuing until eventually they issue a report .
I guess this is the reason for your confidentiality and no-blame policy to actually look for that . People who want to come out with something they found rather than live in denial and just continue as usual , right , yeah , absolutely .
Yeah , couldn't agree more White , more why she keeps just moving people by education , by giving examples , by being accurate , and that it again comes back to the , the skills of the panel to make appropriate comments and the , the processes that cross goes through to ensure that what we put out is is in a safe place . It's , it's not .
Until we're influenced by anything that's not accurate , we definitely avoid the politics and say to the professor well , those behaviors that you were talking about .
We check , we're so . We're trying to encourage engagement on two levels . So , first of all , we want people to be consumers of Cross output . We want people to sign up to receive our reports online . We want them to sign up to receive our newsletters so that they can use Cross as a contribution to their continuing professional development .
It's part of the cultural change . It's about them learning and sharing that knowledge with other people in the office as well and then having chats about an interesting report they've read . So it's about consuming the information . Then the next stage we want people to contribute to this body of knowledge .
We want people to submit their own reports to us and that's the real way that this is going to grow and for the benefit of all is to get more reports submitted to us .
So it's kind of like building a relationship with the user by providing them factual knowledge and perhaps mobilizing them that perhaps you can also contribute and we will make sure that this knowledge that you provide to us will be cross-checked and provided to others like you . Okay , that's really interesting .
And another thought that I have like I'm a researcher , I'm a scientist In science , the science always moves forward . At the end of the 19th century , people were worried that there will be no place for scientists because everything was already invented . Right .
It's a cycle that repeats and repeats , and repeats , and it's for me obvious that most of the theories , most of the assumptions that I have today will eventually be superseded with something better in the future . Yet I don't have any responsibility for using an old theory until a new one took its place and became the industry standard .
In the world of engineering it perhaps is not that direct , because we would have liabilities and stuff like that . I also know that the best scientific discoveries happen in the moment where you figure out something so simple and obvious that it's ridiculous that we were doing it in a different way .
So my question is is it possible that in some aspects of our engineering we are all in the wrong and there perhaps is one person who's right and we are all in the wrong . I , I mean we can all collectively be wrong , and that's probably the places where we would need to cross the most right very difficult that's .
That's quite a hard question to answer . Yeah , what we find is that there are so many facets that can lead to a failure . Really , it's the one thing . Very , very rarely Overarching titles competence , oversight , responsibility , knowledge , but I don't like to think of anything . Peter , but I couldn't have been a silver bullet .
No , there's no such thing , and you know , wojciech , from your work as I know you're a scientist , but also your work as an engineer .
There are different perspectives on what success is , and so you know , we've got life safety objectives , we've got property protection and mission continuity objectives as well , and I would like to talk about a couple of examples that really sort of speak to those kind of different perspectives . But also memories fade fade , don't they ?
These lessons that we , we learn um can quite often get forgotten , um , quite quickly .
I , I lecture to some architecture students and I talk about grenfell tower to them , and then I I have to remind myself well , that happened a considerable number of years ago now , and these , these students were actually teenagers at school at the time , so that their understanding and recollection of the events we've moved on , haven't we ?
So it's very important to keep reminding people about these things as well . I mean , one particular example I'd like to touch on is fires in multi-story car parks . Back in 2017 , there was a fire in Liverpool .
It was called the Liverpool Echo Arena multi-story car park fire , and that was a particularly interesting fire because thousands of cars were destroyed and the fire was so intense that there was significant structural damage and structural failure . So that piqued the interest of of cross and a safety alert was produced .
And the safety alert was aimed at those who own , commission , design , construct or maintain multi-story car parks . It described some of the research on car park fires that that was uh was known at the time .
It gave some design tips for existing multi-storey car parks and for new multi-storey car parks and , in summary , it said that fires in multi-storey car parks do occur and are usually extinguished rapidly .
However , the Liverpool fire provides compelling evidence that this is not always the case and steps should be taken by fire engineers and structural engineers , as well as by owners and managers of similar facilities , to consider the potential impacts of fires in car park structures on both life and property .
And it talks about disastrous fires and what is unacceptable to society . So that was published in February 2018 . So that happened in . That was published in February
¶ Fire Safety Reports
2018 . And then we received a cross safety report from a concerned reporter in October 2020 . And a reporter is concerned by the reluctance of the industry to voluntarily take on board and proactively react to the lessons learned from the fire at the Echo Arena car park in Liverpool .
So this reporter was frustrated by people perhaps adopting the bare minimum in terms of fire protection for a multi-storey car park and thinking back just three years earlier to a fire that happened where there was such a loss . That happened where there was such a loss .
And then , if we think to 2023 , there was a fire at an airport multi-storey car park in Luton . That multi-storey car park was designed and constructed after the Liverpool Echo Arena fire , so that fire incident should have been known about by the people who were designing the car park in Luton , and yet that fire took place .
It closed the airport for nearly 24 hours and we've now got one of the major airports on the outskirts of London without a multi-story car park . That's a significant loss of amenity .
But were the lessons introduced into that design or not ? Or was it the part of this reluctancy without a multi-story ?
car park . That's a significant loss of amenity . But were the lessons introduced into that design or not ? Or was it the part of this reluctancy ? No , they weren't , they weren't , they weren't . So that's when I talked about different perspectives , because some people would say , well , what was wrong with that fire ? Nobody died .
I mean , there were , sadly , some firefighters sustained some injuries in tackling it , but from a life safety point of view it complied with the regulations and it had the minimum standards that we expect in multi-story car parks .
But because the people who commissioned that car park didn't think about mission resilience or think back to an event that happened only a couple of years ago , we're in that situation again . I think that's an interesting example .
With car parks .
You're touching my soft spot because in 2015 , we've published a book in Polish about the safe design of car parks for smoke control mainly and in that book we brought up that you cannot risk losing an entire building that has something on top of it or is important in general , and a few thousand car park in front of an airport certainly is , isn't it .
You cannot risk losing it to a simple car fire , which may or may not occur , and we face so much backlash from the industry that car parks do not burn , that no one died in a car park . And now do you have any feedback ?
We were a few fires after that one , so there was a massive one in Cork , one in Stavanger , there was one in Japan , one in America , one in Warsaw . There was like 10 big open car park fires . Since then , anything changed with the industry , or is the report still a pending thing to be implemented ?
No change in standards . But there's been an increase in chapter in the press about that . It was not learning lessons . We've made column inches in the Times , which is quite unusual for Cross . It crops up in Inside housing and the building magazines quite often , but we don't make mainstream press .
But this time our reporters got the ear of their editor and said that Luton fire , we don't really like it . And Alistair Sloan , structural engineer , and myself interviewed that and we'll put some words into that . No change in standards , though we're still got all the requirements for , excuse me , 15 minutes protection to the structure . Who's your ?
audience . Is it the government ? Is it just the engineers ? I assume it's a mix , but if you want to create good content , you have to create it with one person in mind . I know who is my listener and I create the pop for that person . Who's ? Who's your key receiver ?
that's a good question and that's something that does influence how we present the information in our reports , because we are conscious that there's a wide variety types of of user of this information .
Essentially , the the main bulk of our readership is the professional engineer , whether that's a structural engineer or a fire engineer , um , but we're keen for readership from far and wide and there are plenty of other engineering disciplines who are very interested in cross-reports .
But also there's a relevance to professions , you know , architects , building designers , fire and rescue service , those responders and regulators . But , like I say , that influences how we present our information and we always present our reports in a consistent way . They start off .
If you had a look at our website , you'll see that each of our reports has a number , a report ID , so we can uniquely identify them , and there's always a publication date associated with them .
Actually , before you even go to the report , there is a very well-written summary on the web page that gives you the most important bits with the background , and that's the first thing I see when I enter , and I really appreciate that way of presenting data because that gives me a really good overview of is this relevant to myself ? Can I learn more from that ?
Or perhaps it's an issue that I've never seen in my life and I can just read it out of curiosity if I have time absolutely , yeah , the the overview , the report overview , is very important for just just those reasons you've .
You've mentioned um , we also have have have a title , a report title that contains a lot of words , but that that's . That's important , because that helps with search engine optimization so you can really focus in and you get all the reports that are associated with a particular topic you're searching for . But after the overview we present key learning outcomes .
You may have seen this . It's a highlighted box called key learning outcomes and we try to draw out the key learning outcomes for various different professionals . So I'm just looking at a couple of examples here . We've got key learning outcomes for designers , for fire engineers , for structural design engineers and for firefighters .
And you know we try and keep these quite short , pithy bullet points for key learning outcomes . But if a person's just reading the overview and reading those key learning outcomes , then they're taking a lot away . They're getting some good learning from that .
They may want to delve a bit further and go into the full report , which is the edited version of the report that's submitted to us , and then the reports always finish off with expert panel comments . So any thoughts or additions that our expert panels members have have given to that particular topic are presented in the report as well .
So to answer that question again , I think a wide variety of people from the construction sector can get a lot out of the overview and those key learning outcomes if it applies to them , and then then those with a particular interest or a specialism in a particular topic can delve deeper into the report and the meat of the report and the expert panel comments that
follow it are the expert panel comments also filtered , or is it consensus among the experts what gets published ?
it's quite a challenging job bringing them together . We very , very , very rarely have significantly different opinions . We get good support and different angles , but not clashing . It's making sure that their points are given appropriate priority and are not missed in the process . It's very rare that everyone in the panel would have a comment .
They stick to their specialisms and their area of knowledge . They might well read to make sure that the appropriate people have checked over that report before they'd say something themselves . The expert panel is also interested in helping project the learning . You ask well , jake , about what's our audience ? Well , we've got a member of the building advisory committee .
We've got a member of our external who is a , an architect , and we try to make sure that we've got that broad representation in the skills in the team so they transmit back into their section . If we had a eureka , we know that it won't be transmitted appropriately .
You've previously used the term . You make those reports easy to read . And it really rings a bell for me because I'm about to go for an SFP conference with a keynote on communication and why I think communication is perhaps the most lacking skill among fire engineers .
And good communication and I'm not talking about communicating to a fellow fire safety engineer Boy , that's easy , but go ahead and communicate to the firefighter , architect , investor and the government at the same time , right ? How do you make this content approachable to non-fire experts who may need to have a general understanding of the issue ?
Because perhaps if you're issuing a report on CLT actually the CLT report is an excellent example the cross-laminated timber in multi-story buildings .
It was a loud story a few years ago when you published it , because it quite brutally tells people that CLT and ADB is not your typical building , that you would apply ADB , and I assume that has far-reaching consequences .
How do you make and this message has to reach fire engineers okay , sure , but there's the timber magazine or whatever magazine the architects have on timber that says timber is stronger than steel and they are in the denial of any fire issue . How do you reach those people with your message ?
¶ Fire Safety Reports and Collaboration
Interestingly , we published a report about CLT in tall buildings and we got some feedback on our website that sent us cold . It was so chilling that the people that had read the reports and made comments didn't understand what we were saying . So we crafted the individual report , the special edition report , that says hey , anyone dealing with CLT ?
We've heard since that . That paper , the theme page , was it , peter ? Help me out . It probably got in front of you .
I haven't . Was it a safety alert that we put ?
out . We put out an alert . Thank you , yeah , and we've heard that that's been taken by building control officers into meetings to justify their sounds . Look Cross says you can't do that .
That's good , but it's still crafting the message . I mean , you don't rely on the skills of the reporter , right ? It's your editing and you are fitting that message to come out to the more general audience , right .
Yes , I don't think there's any particular secret in what we do .
We are becoming more and more experienced in doing that , but we are still benefiting from the guidance of alistair soan to the scheme back in 2005 , and I know I think neil uses the term where we're standing on the shoulders of giants there but we really are with Alistair because he's still importing a lot of guidance to us and we are still refining what we do
.
We still need it .
Great , great . You said you have a ton of examples to discuss , so let's try two or three more , because perhaps we can get more out of discussing specific issues .
Yeah , absolutely Well . I highlighted the one about the risk of collapse of multi-story CLT buildings during a fire because that was a particularly interesting one that led to that safety alert having to be issued to clarify what we were saying , and that was a bit of a sort of a milestone for us . Really , that was really interesting .
But it's another example of how people can submit comments after they've read the report and , subject to us reviewing them before they're published on the website . They can be then published on our website as feedback and that sort of adds to the conversation .
It's also worth saying that our reports are often shared on social media , linkedin particularly , and that's another good way of getting the message out , disseminating the message but also growing the message . There's a lot of discourse that goes on with people adding comments on on linkedin , so , uh , that that's all encouraged .
Another good example is fire protection to light gauge steel frame walls . Um , I mentioned it earlier . Um , it's report I d 1116 . You see it's structured in the usual way .
It's got a good overview , which is a disagreement between fire engineers and manufacturers on testing for load-bearing performance of a light-gauge steel frame wall in the case of fire was reported to us and it goes into a lot of detail about the information that was provided by the manufacturer and how this particular reporter had to delve a lot deeper to get to the
truth , and it touches on some published guidance from the Steel Construction Institute and talks about that in some detail . It's an unusual report because it's quite long .
It's probably longer than we'd like to have them because we like our reports to be quite snappy , but this was an important issue , so we afforded , we've got the flexibility to give it that space and I encourage your listeners to take a look at it because it talks about fire testing in a lot of detail . But what's interesting about this ?
Fire testing in a lot of detail . But what's interesting about this ? One attracted a lot of comment from our expert panel , but we actually went to see representatives of the steel construction institute and we've published their response to this report , which , which I think was a really good way forward .
It was a really positive experience , a positive exchange between us as CROSS , who had these concerns that were reported to us , and the SCI was able to consider those concerns and actually come back in a really positive way with their response . So that's a long report .
It's quite unusual in its length it shows that being proactive and discussing things in a collaborative way is there for the benefit of all . We all learn from that .
Yeah , what caught my attention perhaps you remember that when I was going through timber and cladding , because these are the things that interest me and then there was a report about some sort of using timber as a cladding material , that went down into some rabbit hole into papers from you know 1960s and someone like reading three A's as like seven A's or something
like some you know issue . That's like half a century old . And then now in the 21st century , apparently in your regulations it calls the wrong number of what's safe , so that one went a really long way to cross-check that . But in the end wow , that's a magic number .
And you know what I'm in CN committees for smoke control and you would not believe how many times we end up looking for an origin of something and it ends up with Howard Morgan Sesso in like 1993 meeting in whatever city and then since then it was not changed .
He was a genius and I would trust him with everything , but yet we as a community , we so often have lost the capability to trace back the origins . It's really disturbing .
No , you're absolutely right , roycek . I've picked this report as well For your listeners . It's 1194 , which is the report ID , and it was published later on last year .
Yeah , it was a recent one . Yeah .
A reporter relays a concern that guidance to the building regulations regarding the use of timber cladding may be the result of a misinterpretation . And you're quite right .
It goes back to the works of , you know , fire Research , note 8 from 1965 , and talking about publications by Thomas and Margaret Law and Malhotra so yeah , great , great names of the pioneers of fire engineering from the 60s and 70s . But you're quite right , and that report has gained a lot of interest .
It got some really nice additional comments from our expert panel and it's an example where , you know , maybe the guidance does need looking at again .
I mean it's an example . I mean Margaret Lowe or Thomas or Howard Morgan or whoever of the giants that were before us . They were just humans . It's okay that they could mistake Like we can make a mistake and hopefully someone will eventually catch up and fix .
But if we believe that the collective knowledge is 100% accurate and factual and there's no bumps and holes in it , then we perhaps are defending the incorrect . That also goes back to my question can we all be wrong ? Can we collectively be wrong ? Because there are more and more examples .
The more you dig in , the more we figure out that the bases are not as sound as we would like them to be . And it's not because someone was wrong . It's about limitations , it's about culture , it's about the background at which someone was working with .
And you need to assume a paradigm that we all need to move forward and only then we can be safer , right ?
We're starting to receive more reports from the fire and rescue services . Okay , you really don't want the fire service to be telling you that your standards are wrong . That's far too long downstream , isn't it ? But that is the fact .
Fire and rescue services are sending us quite valuable reports about incidents that they are concerned about , about fire spread , about behavior , materials , and there hasn't been such a positive route available before cross was set up .
as well , yeah they'd produce their reports and , unless they catastrophic , which meant that they got into government , they would get lost amongst the experts inside the fire service .
This is absolutely fantastic . In Poland , there must be a fire in which multiple people die and then the regulations change overnight and there's suddenly a thousand buildings undergoing control in the next week , and so on . So , but generally , firefighters have reasonable concerns about some of the systems and engineering that we do .
I often propose a solution for smoke control and firefighters tell me Voyager , the first thing I'm going to do when I enter the building is I'm going to turn it off because I don't understand it . I don't believe it , I don't trust it . I don't believe it . I don't trust it .
Like I cannot rely on this and there's no way such a feedback could circulate into general community of fire safety engineers . And here you have reports like that , where firefighters would be concerned with some of the operational or technical aspects of buildings .
I was just going to talk . We've talked about receiving reports from fire and rescue services that are reflecting on incidents they've been to , but we're also getting from fire and rescue services when they're acting as the regulator . So they are inspecting buildings or acting as the consultee on designs that are put to them .
Now we're receiving a few at that stage which present some problems , some issues to us . We've got to process those reports quite carefully because it could be that the buildings that they are talking about might be subject to sort of legal proceedings in the future .
But it's interesting that we're receiving reports from regulators at that stage and with some careful editing , so that we can't put anything into the public domain that might be part of some legal proceedings in the future .
It's useful for us to share the general principles that are being discussed and collate the statistics on the frequency that we're receiving that kind of concern . I think that's quite an important gauge , quite an important barometer on how successful the design community is progressing and the construction industry is responding .
Because I think anybody who read Dame Judith Hackett's investigations into building regulations and fire safety would be struck by the number of times she used the words competence and culture . And one thing that we're focused on is trying to see that , trying to demonstrate that culture change and try and encourage better practices .
So , guys , an hour goes so quickly when you're having fun . Talking fire with fellow fire safety engineers definitely is considered fun in my world . Gentlemen , I'm giving you the venue of the fire science show for a final message , perhaps an encouragement . So who wants to start ?
Well , thank you very much for the opportunity to to speak to your audience and I would just like to go back to the message I said earlier that we'd like to encourage those people who have not already signed up to cross to to visit our website and to subscribe so that they can receive the information , be consumers that information .
And also we'd like to encourage people to report to us , being mindful that it is a very safe environment to do so . Anybody can do that to help that culture change and improve the safety of the built environment for all fantastic yeah very little to add .
Loy , really appreciate to talk to you . To transmit communications are so critical . You've created a platform that enables us to chat , to explain things that people might not take the time to read , but by producing a podcast , hopefully it gets into ears . That become influencers , become reporters or readers .
Thank , you very much , and that's it . The mission of cross uk is definitely fascinating and they're spreading to usa , australia . I hope this model grows in the world because I feel it is really needed .
I have perhaps good news for you After we've recorded this episode , I talked a bit with the Cross , I've talked a bit with O'Farr , the sponsor of this podcast , and altogether we came to a conclusion that it's valuable to share the Cross insights in the Fire Science Show with the fire safety engineers directly and we've decided to try and do some cross episodes
crossover episodes of fire science show , which perhaps will start airing since june , where we will be discussing with peter and neil recent reports reported to cross so we can talk them over , so you have even easier way to access all the interesting stuff that comes out of cross . That's the least I can do .
I hope amplifying their message will create some goodness in the world and I hope you , as the listeners of Fireside Show , will enjoy that additional source of important and interesting knowledge out there .
I'm very sure that something good will come out of that and for now I can only ask you to visit Cross UK website , become a reader and perhaps one day become involved . It's a great thing for all of the fire safety engineering . Thank you for listening to the fire science show and I am looking forward to have you here next Wednesday .
¶ Fire Science Show Episode Farewell
Episode 150 let Woohoo , let's go See you there . Bye , this was the Fire Science Show . Thank you for listening .