Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry - Fire safety expert evidence

Presented by:  Dr Susan Deeny (CEng PhD MEng MIFireE), Tom Parker (MEng), and Farah Binte Mohd Faudzi (MSc) from ARUP. 

In the early hours of Wednesday 14 June 2017 a fire broke out in the kitchen of Flat 16 Grenfell Tower, a high-rise residential building in North Kensington, West London.

Within minutes of their arrival Firefighters from the London Fire Brigade (LFB) had extinguished the fire within the kitchen of Flat 16, the fire had however already spread to the external cladding. Within 20 minutes a vertical column of flame had reached the top of the building. Within a few hours it had engulfed almost the whole of the building.

The fire claimed the lives of 71 people who were present in the tower that night. Another resident who had escaped from the building died seven months later.

A total of 227 people in all (residents and visitors) escaped from the tower.

On the morning after the fire the Prime Minister announced that there would be a Public Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the fire.

Dr Barbara Lane of Arup was appointed as a fire safety engineering expert to the Inquiry. This resulted in 5 years of full-time investigation work across a range of fire safety issues.

Fire engineers from Arup who assisted Dr Lane undertaking technical investigations for expert witness evidence submitted to the inquiry shall provide an overview of their investigations, and the Inquiry's Phase 1 and 2 reports in this presentation.

This presentation will be given remotely by the presenters as they are located in the UK. At this time there is no call in option for our membership. 

Please consider becoming a drink sponsor for this meetings networking session (register as part of the event). 

UPDATED SCHEDULE AND DINNER FORMAT FOR 2024-2025 PROGRAM YEAR

3:00-4:30PM - Board of Directors Meeting (Members Welcome)

4:30-5:00PM - Registration & Cocktails

5:00-6:00PM - Dinner and Program

6:00-7:00PM - Cocktails and Networking

Dinner will be a Chef Choice Buffet, which will include  soup, 2 salads, 2 entrees, starch, vegetable and dessert display with coffee and tea (please email program@sfpe-newengland.org with and dietary restrictions)

Presenter Bios

Susan is a post doctoral research graduate and Chartered Engineering with 14 years' experience as a practicing Fire Safety Engineer, currently based in Edinburgh. She provided the technical and delivery leadership on all aspects of Arup’s expert witness evidence for the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry through Phase 1 and 2.

Her experience includes development and delivery of fire strategies, undertaking performance-based fire engineering assessments, providing fire risk assessments for operational buildings, undertaking site inspection of existing building fire safety provisions and leading expert investigations for building fire safety system defects. She actively continues fire safety research both within Arup and with our external collaborators in the field of structural fire engineering and novel construction methods such as mass timber.

Tom has 10 years of experience as a fire engineer, currently based in Edinburgh. He has developed fire strategies (both design and retrospective) across a range of sectors and undertaken performance-based fire engineering calculation for structural fire, fire and smoke spread, and evacuations.

Tom also has extensive experience reviewing fire test reports and third-party certification, for projects at Arup. He has have witnessed multiple fire tests for the purpose of advising a contractor on product specification compliance with the Arup fire safety strategy requirements.

He was also part of project teams delivering four expert witness legal cases where he was responsible for assessing the compliance of the external wall construction and fire stopping non compliance.

Tom drew on this experience for his contributions to the Inquiry, where he led on Arup’s expert analysis of fire safety product and system compliance from specification, through to construction and certification. Tom mapped the complex routes to compliance through regulation, statutory guidance and provided critical analysis of manufacturer’s literature and 3rd part certifications. He developed and delivered training to the Inquiry legal teams on the complex testing British and European framework for material combustibility and reaction to fire classifications. In Phase 2 Tom also undertook analysis of whether vulnerable characteristics of occupants resulted in a higher mortality rate.

Farah has 5 years’ experience as a practicing Fire Safety Engineer at Arup, currently based in Bristol. She has an additional 5 years’ experience prior as a practicing Mechanical Engineer in Singapore.

Her experience at Arup includes development and delivery of fire strategies for a range of projects and sectors such as mixed-used developments, commercial and recreational facilities. She has also worked on fire safety strategies for infrastructure projects as well as contributed to technical analysis, research, expert witness projects and in-house learning and development programmes.

Farah was part of the core team in Phase 2 of the Inquiry, she led detailed analysis of the design and operation of a hybrid ventilation and smoke control system in the central escape lobby of Grenfell Tower; the participated in controls testing and caried out critical analysis of witness and post fire evidence on the operation of the system and the potential spread of smoke between lobbies. Alongside this, Farah carried detailed analysis on the adequacy of how fire safety duties with respect to life safety in an occupied building were discharged, and the adequacy of advice provided by fire safety professionals on the external wall and protection of vulnerable persons.

That produced a comprehensive report on the smoke control system provided within the central escape lobby of Grenfell Tower. This included testing the complex controls provided to this hybrid system and critical analysis of witness evidence and post fire evidence of the system operation during the fire to determine if it provided an additional route of smoke spread through the building escape routes. to the Inquiry for Phase 2 Module 3 Smoke Control Systems which encompassed an exhaustive review of the evidence available to understand the system installed within the tower. Farah’s focus was specifically on the controls and operation of the smoke control system as well as the analysis of the lobby smoke control system performance on the night of the fire.

Farah was also involved in the Module 3 report on the Management and Maintenance of Grenfell Tower with a detailed review into how duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order were discharged by the responsible person. Farah’s contribution was mainly in the assessing the adequacy of the advice provided by the fire risk assessor, hazard posed by external wall construction and adequacy of fire protection for vulnerable persons.