Following the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety concluded that the UK building safety system is inadequate. The Government accepted the review’s recommendation for a new regulatory framework. A Joint Regulators’ Group, including the Health and Safety Executive, is assisting in the transition to this proposed framework.
The HSE has issued a research report which describes research, done in 2019, for the Joint Regulators’ Group.
The research aims to identify a preliminary set of representative serious incident scenarios for high rise residential buildings, and potential control measures.
The researchers:
The research team has experience in safety case regimes, risk management, building construction, and fire. They used formal risk analysis techniques (‘HAZID’ and ‘bow tie’) to structure the process, and a Hierarchy of Controls approach to rank the effectiveness of potential control measures. They considered rapidly escalating events requiring immediate large scale emergency response.
The report identifies ten preliminary representative serious incident scenarios.
The potential control measures identified for consideration include:
These findings are being used to inform the development of a risk framework for the proposed new safety case regime.
To access the full HSE report, click here.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, we hear from Gill Kernick about the pressing need to improve building safety culture post-Grenfell.
