[SystemSafety] Grenfell

[Chris Johnson]

<https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/evidence/professor-christopher-johnson>
Professor Christopher Johnson<https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/evidence/professor-christopher-johnson>
grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk<https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/evidence/professor-christopher-johnson>
[favicon.ico]<https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/evidence/professor-christopher-johnson>

Most of my expert witness testimony is in volume 5 of the phase two report released yesterday.

Prof. Chris Johnson
Chief Scientific Adviser | NTA/CSA Office
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Mobile: 07922 576 926 | csa at dsit.gov.uk<mailto:csa at dsit.gov.uk>
100 Parliament Street, London, SW1A 2BQ.
www.gov.uk/dsit<http://www.gov.uk/dsit> | https://twitter.com/sciTechgovuk

Professor of Computing Science, Centre for Secure Information Technology,
School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computing Science,
Queen’s University, Belfast.    c.w.johnson at qub.ac.uk<mailto:c.w.johnson at qub.ac.uk>

“Believe that a further shore is reachable from here” (Seamus Heaney)


On 5 Sep 2024, at 14:04, Prof. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at causalis.com> wrote:

This message is from an external sender. Please take care when responding, clicking links or opening attachments.

So the Grenfell Inquiry report is now out. 1,700pp of what I take to be distressing reading.

I recall there was some bickering over the appointment of Sir Martin Moore-Bick to lead the inquiry.
But the UK has a venerable tradition of judge-led inquiries into safety (Piper Alpha, Ladbroke
Grove, King's Cross fire) and Sir Martin seems to have added to it. His words on release of the
report were uncompromising. This Guardian comment by Peter Apps, a housing expert and journalist,
sums up the scope of the enterprise well
https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2Farticle%2F2024%2Fsep%2F04%2Fgrenfell-is-simply-explained-firms-chased-profits-ministers-sat-on-their-hands-innocents-paid-with-their-lives&data=05%7C02%7Cc.w.johnson%40qub.ac.uk%7Cb8b5657f647a44791ba308dccdab3d66%7Ceaab77eab4a549e3a1e8d6dd23a1f286%7C0%7C0%7C638611382559517469%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C4000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=fiT6HqTEogYylg5wEXIsPJEh6KVzCmH8Kcq7iCIEQDQ%3D&reserved=0


I get particularly distressed when work I have done turns out to be useless. Here were entire
engineering companies (Kingspan, Celotex, Arconic) who (Sir Martin tells us) knew they had products
which fire safety people would deem to be unsafe, and who sold them anyway while attempting to
manage the PR. Even after the fatal Lakanal House fire in 2006, the "building fire safety culture"
continued apparently as it was, until 2017 and Grenfell. In this kind of culture, our skills are
useless. Because the industrials involved and their clients (city council agencies) simply appear
not to have cared much, if at all. And, in safety, you need the people involved to care.

I find this barely fathomable. This, in a land in which, 50 years ago, Parliament enacted HSWA 1974.

As people may remember, we had some discussion here in 2017 at the time of the fire. People may be
aware that accident and incident analysis is one of my specialties. I don't think I had ever
encountered a situation in which pretty much everything I looked at in the way of safety in those
first few days turned out to be a chimera. This was not Piper Alpha; this was not Ladbroke Grove;
this was not King's Cross; this was in another league entirely.

It requires governments to change such a culture. Which means, first and foremost, the will to do so
must be there (I understand Sir Martin has shown that it wasn't). Let us hope it now is.

PBL

Prof. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin
Causalis Limited/Causalis IngenieurGmbH, Bielefeld, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)521 3 29 31 00

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