Mark Chalmers

Compared to its dysfunctional cousin south of the Border, the Building Control system in Scotland is more stringent. You’ve never been able to build high rise blocks with only one means of escape in Scotland, and our Building Warrant process wasn’t hived off to the private sector by Thatcher.

In my experience, Building Standards departments communicate well with architects: those I’ve dealt with recently in Aberdeenshire, the City of Aberdeen and City of Dundee organise updates and seminars for architects, explaining changes to the regulations and asking for our feedback. We attended an update session a few weeks ago, when the Team Leader at Building Standards ran through upcoming revisions to the Technical Standards.

Three things stuck out: the reversal of the wood-fired stoves fiasco, the long-term implications of the Grenfell Tower fire, and the need to remove politicians from the room when procurement and construction are discussed.

Firstly, fitting wood-fired stoves in new builds is no longer banned. I could go into a political rant (at the risk of death by boredom) about the misguided impulse behind the proposed ban, but just like scrapping the target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030, it demonstrates that the folk who come up with these policies aren’t talking to those who have to implement them. Between them lies a yawning gap between declarative statements and practical action – a gap traditionally occupied by politicians.

In this case, while policy-makers thought they’d found a clever way to penalise rich folk who build fancy houses, most of us saw the ban as a first step towards the eventual banning of solid fuel stoves, back boilers, and open fires. The reality is that solid-fuel stoves and open fires are used by many people in the overlooked 95% of Scotland’s landmass – the part beyond the big cities which is called the countryside. People there have to be pragmatic about how they heat their houses, because you still get deep snow up the glens and in the Highlands: sometimes the LPG tanker, or coal lorry, or oil tanker, or even the heat pump repair man, can’t get through. So you need to have a back-up, such as solar panels, or open fires, or a solid fuel stove.

The only experience I have of solid fuel was at my grandparents' house in an Aberdeenshire village.  There were fireplaces in several rooms, but I only remember a couple downstairs being lit in winter – you can imagine that the house was a bit chilly, but my grandparents were hardy and didn't seem to notice. They had a shed for coal, and another shed for logs, but no central heating – the village had no mains gas. They heated their house the way several generations of Essons had done before them.

Secondly, Building Standards introduced us to a new role, the CPM or Compliance Plan Manager – a new acronym, confusingly similar to but distinct from CDM or CPD. Unlike the earlier Planning Supervisor, CDM Coordinator and Principal Designer roles, this one carries heavy consequences for getting it wrong: likely up to a £50,000 fine and two years imprisonment. After the presentation, I asked the Team Leader whether the Scottish Government foresaw that architects could fulfil the CPM role. He believed yes we could, but we both agreed that the liabilities and hence the professional indemnity insurance premiums could be off-putting.

Is the CPM another opportunity for architects to retain part of their traditional role, which has gradually been chipped away by project managers, Planning Supervisors and CDM Coordinators? Or is it a poisoned chalice, which will see CPM’s in the dock when something tragic happens on site or years later when the building is in use? Time will tell.

Finally, the repercussions of the Grenfell Tower Report were discussed at length. While the report heaps criticism on the architect, Building Control, K&C Council, the contractors and suppliers such as Kingspan, Arconic and Celotex – it’s also notable for not tackling the political and legislative failures which resulted in Grenfell Tower being designed and built the way it was.

For example, who allowed English tower blocks to be built with a single means of escape? In Scotland, all tower blocks have two separate means of escape. Architects and contractors can only follow the rulebook they’ve been given. Who allowed plastic foam insulation to be used in over-cladding tower blocks? Surely any insulation used in construction, especially on mid-rise and high-rise buildings, should be Class A1, in other words completely non-flammable? Shouldn’t plastic foam insulation be blacklisted, like RAAC and the structural use of woodwool slabs were?

Most of all, who allowed the public sector to procure construction work using Design & Build contracts? Most people I’ve spoken to feel that’s a fundamental problem, the root cause of dangerous buildings. The client asks for a safe building, the architect designs a safe building, but once he or she is novated to the contractor, cost rather than quality and safety becomes the driver. Whether or not an architect is “reasonably competent” or “suitably experienced” or whichever description the construction lawyers select – once they’re working for the contractor, architects can only argue so many times about quality and specification before they’re slapped down.

To make matters worse, in many cases the D&B contractor’s cost savings don’t benefit the client – due the way that the contracts work, unless there’s an explicit clawback mechanism which shares the value engineering savings between client and contractor, they go straight onto the contractor’s margin.

Government is in charge of legislating on Building Standards – so perhaps they should shoulder some blame for allowing English tower blocks to be built with a single means of escape. Government is in charge of legislating on building materials testing and classification across the UK – so they should shoulder some blame for plastic foam insulation being used. And most of all, government is in charge of public sector procurement – surely they must shoulder blame for allowing Design & Build contracts to be used on tower block refurbishments?

We may not work south of the border, and we might not be working on tower blocks (although I’ve done both at different stages of my career) but the shockwaves of Grenfell Tower are being felt across Scotland’s Building Standards system, too. For what it’s worth, I think we should be listening to the advocates of Fabric First, and rapidly upgrading as much of the existing building stock as we can, using much non-flammable insulation and improved airtightness. That way, the heating loads of buildings will shrink to the point where their CO2 emissions are less of an issue than they are now, and people’s energy bills will shrink, too.

As to fixing political meddling in the construction industry – good luck with that.