Fire engineer spent just 15 hours working on Grenfell fire safety strategy, inquiry hears
The fire engineer who wrote the fire safety strategy for the Grenfell Tower prior to its refurbishment spent just 15 hours on the project and did not visit the site in person, the inquiry heard today.
The inquiry heard evidence from Ms Cooney today before hearings were adjourned indefinitely because of tough new government advice aimed at halting the spread of coronavirus.
It had heard that according to an invoice spreadsheet provided to the inquiry by fire consultancy Exova, former employee Cate Cooney spent just 15 hours drafting the first fire safety strategy for the pre-refurbishment of Grenfell Tower in 2012.
Ms Cooney was instructed to produce a fire safety strategy for Grenfell Tower as it stood in 2012, as part of consultancy work Exova was carrying out in connection to the refurbishment of the tower.
In response to the timesheet, Ms Cooney said it is “a good indicator but not 100% accurate” as a reflection of the time spent on projects and said three days was a normal amount of time to spend on a first draft like this, “where there’s a lot of caveats”.
Ms Cooney, who only ever produced a first draft of the strategy, said that producing a final strategy is typically an “iterative process of drafts”, which would include input from the client.
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This was the reason Ms Cooney gave when asked why the draft strategy included a lot of “unknown” information, for example whether various areas of the building were covered by an automatic fire detection system.
Ms Cooney, who was based in Warrington at the time, said she never visited the building in person but instead relied on information given to her by a colleague who visited the site.
The 16-page document produced by Ms Cooney made a number of recommendations based on her concerns with the existing building, most notably in connection to the building’s smoke ventilation system, which was found to be “unsatisfactory from a modern perspective”.
Ms Cooney submitted her report to Studio E, the architecture firm that designed the refurbishment of the tower, on 16 August and left to go on holiday the next day.
She said she does not recall ever discussing her concerns with the architects upon her return and did not check whether any of her recommended work had been carried out.
It is unclear why no further version of this report was ever produced.
Exova went on to produce draft fire safety strategies for the refurbishment of the building in October 2012 and 2013.
These strategies said the plans would have “no adverse effect” on the building in relation to external fire spread, but cautioned that this conclusion would need to be confirmed in a future issue of the report. No such future issue was ever written.
Exova reached this conclusion despite being aware that a rainscreen cladding system was proposed for the tower featuring combustible insulation, although they did believe that less combustible zinc cladding panels would be used.
Architects who have given evidence over the past fortnight have said the report gave them false confidence that their designs were fire safe.
The inquiry will continue at a later date because of the coronavirus suspension, when Ms Cooney and further witnesses from Exova will give evidence.
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