The government of New South Wales has implemented a 10-point fire safety plan in the wake of the Grenfell tower conflagration in June.
According to ABC Australia, more than 1,000 buildings have been identified by the NSW government as having potentially dangerous cladding.
The scheme aims to ensure unsafe building products are taken off the shelves, buildings with cladding are identified and that only people with the right skills and experience are able to certify buildings and sign off on fire safety.
The plan includes:
- A building product safety scheme that would prevent the use of dangerous products on buildings.
- The identification of buildings that might have aluminium or plastic cladding.
- Writing to the building managers or owners of those buildings to encourage them to inspect the cladding.
- Sending the Fire and Rescue service to all buildings on the list to gather information to prepare for a potential fire.
- The creation of a fire safety declaration that would require high-rise residential buildings to inform state and local governments as well as Fire and Rescue of their cladding type.
- Reforms to toughen the regulation of building certifiers.
- Creating an industry-based accreditation scheme to ensure only skilled and experienced people can carry out fire safety inspections.
- Establishing a whole-of-government taskforce to coordinate and roll out the reforms.
- Instructing all government departments to audit their buildings and determine if they have aluminium cladding, with an initial focus on social housing.
- Following up with local councils on correspondence they received in 2016 from the NSW Government after Melbourne’s Lacrosse Tower fire.
Matt Kean, the minister for better regulation, said: “This package will protect consumers from building products that are inherently dangerous or that are being advertised for use in a way that makes them dangerous.”
Read more about NSW fire safety here.
Image: ChiralJon/Wikipedia
Comments
Comments are closed.
Why are they concentrating on aluminium cladding which does not burn. It is only plastic cladding and the wrong insulation that burns, surely???
The discussion I had yesterday with a QS on the issue of fire safety and materials, was along the lines of ‘where does it say in the Regs that product x cannot be used’, and, if we change the specification so that certain products (that give off toxic smoke in a fire) aren’t used, where do we stop?
I can well imagine the same was said at Grenfell, with its nominal Class 0 cladding, and its tested Celotex insulation.
That kind of attitude is troubling, as ultimately it seems to me people like QS’s are the ones advising the clients and making the call, but in the process having little to no accountability for the outcome, as they aren’t the designers who have the responsibility if something goes wrong.
Any kind of cladding needs to be considered. It is possible to have cladding with BS EN 13501-1 European Class A1 or A2 cores with SURFACE SPREAD OF FLAME ratings to facing materials lower than the European Class B and C allowed by the English and Welsh Building Regulations. Diagram 40 in Paragraph 12.6 may also allow the converse. Facing materials that achieve the European Class B and C, but have combustible cores of European Class D. In the case of Grenfell Tower the cladding material was certified as compliant with the Approved Document Part B Volume 2 for its surface, which ignores the fact that the core could be combustible. So watch our for laminated cladding products that combine finishes and facings with cores.