COVER STORY The remains of the Grenfell Tower block in West London.
“Fire should never be able to spread between units and certainly not between floors. If a fire can spread between floors, everything we base our fire principles on are out the window.” Geoff Hanmer, managing director, ARINA architecture Bronwyn Weir in 2017 to provide recommendations to improve building safety and compliance. The report, which was completed in April 2018, also focused on managing the ongoing risks arising from the non-compliant use of combustible cladding. The report also recommended setting up a cladding replacement program. “Getting the combustible cladding off is going to take some time but it’s a real priority,” says Hanmer. “We’ve
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got billions and billions of dollars of remedial works that are required across the Australian market. This is a very, very significant failure of regulation.”
SLOW PROCESS
Despite the recommendations, no implementations have been set up by the BMF, that is run by state and federal building ministers who collectively instruct the Australian Building Codes Board. ABCB. “The arrangements are terribly complicated because no one organisation or person is directly responsible for any of this,” says Hanmer, who notes that hundreds of residential buildings are rated as either a moderate or high risk by NSW and Victorian governments. In fact, Neo200 was regarded as only a moderate risk. So, what do tradespeople need be aware of when dealing with cladding? Hanmer says they must ensure the cladding is fixed according to the requirements of the manufacturer. “With the Grenfell Tower disaster, there was a void between the rear
of the cladding and the original side of the building,” explains Hanmer. “This created a chimney effect that was responsible, in part, for the rapid spread of the fire. Unfortunately, it’s possible to install cladding on a building that will effectively spread fire from storey to storey, even if the cladding itself isn’t combustible. “If you create a flue between one storey and the next and the flames access the flue and are confined, when they reach a window on the floor above, the fire will spread between floors. This is extremely dangerous.” The architect also recommends that there should be no ignition sources, particularly on balconies—in other words, make sure barbecues are not near any cladding. “If the fat from a barbecue catches fire, there’s every chance that it could spread to the cladding, even if the barbecue is a distance away.” Like the rest of the building industry, Hanmer is waiting for a national cladding replacement program to be implemented but, so far, no time frame has been set.