UNCOMFORTABLE READING ALL ROUND
Professor John Cole’s independent report on last year’s temporary closure of 17 Edinburgh schools was published yesterday (see foot of page).
It contains recommendations for City of Edinburgh Council (CEC), other public and private bodies, and the construction industry on: procurement, construction, training and recruitment, the role of the building standards and independent certifiers, and how information is shared.
CEC yesterday pointed to six key findings in the 263-page document:
- the collapse of the wall at Oxgangs was due to poor construction and inadequate supervision;
- insufficient independent quality assurance and poor record keeping by CEC and the Edinburgh Schools Partnership;
- ineffective quality assurance within the construction industry;
- CEC’s correct decision to close the schools;
- the alternative education arrangements by CEC was a ‘remarkable feat’;
- issues identified in Edinburgh are probably widespread across Scotland.
CEC's Chief Executive will now draw up an action plan to address all points pertaining to Council practices.
Trenchant criticism
The report’s Conclusions in its Executive Summary (pages 20–23) are strongly worded and explicit. They include:
- Fundamental defects found across all 17 schools were not the result of isolated incompetence.
- Similar problems are likely to be present with similar frequency in other types of building containing large masonry panels.
- Visual inspection of walls after they’ve been closed up cannot identify problems. Effective quality assurance and scrutiny must take place during construction.
- ‘It is also clear that clients, particularly public sector clients with statutory duties in relation to the communities they serve, cannot simply delegate away from themselves the responsibility of putting in place an appropriate level of informed, independent scrutiny to ensure the safety of the public buildings they procure.’
- ‘A review of the drivers that have resulted in the virtual removal of appropriate independent scrutiny is required to bring the pendulum back to a more realistic position in this regard. As stated before, best practice methods are available, and could be incorporated into all models of procurement to address what is clearly emerging as a shortcoming in the way the construction industry currently operates. The procurers of buildings need to consider whether the drive for faster, lower cost construction may be being achieved to the detriment of its quality and safety.’
In a double-edged compliment, the report also concludes that:
… the City of Edinburgh Council were faced with a totally unexpected problem, which they have managed extremely well despite the very significant challenges which they had to address. For this they are to be complimented. The problems they have had to face were fundamentally the result of poor quality construction and poor quality supervision of construction, which in slightly different circumstances, could have resulted in the injury or loss of the lives of school children.
Drummond in particular
The report contains sections specifically about Drummond Community High School, where building was begun by Dickie Construction (dissolved in 2014) but taken over, following ‘contractual issues’, by Miller Construction. It was completed in July 2003
Civil and engineering structural design here, as in all the other 16 school projects, was overseen by the WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff (WSP) consultancy. It worked as part of separate design teams led by two architectural practices, but was not answerable to them. When CEC approached WSP with a specific request for design information on Drummond on 2 June 2016, WSP would not provide the information owing to the constraints of its contract with Amey/Miller JP. On 6 June, WSP said that, after a review of its archive, it could find no information relating to Drummond CHS. ‘On 9th June, it was reported that Amey were now in possession of a set of drawings for Drummond High School, which had been discovered in further searches of the [Edinburgh Schools Partnership] archive (not provided by WSP) …’.
The report identifies problems with insufficient embedment of wall ties in the affected schools, and contains two images of ‘virtually no embedment’ at Drummond CHS.
A summary of some defects and remedial work appears in the following table. Boxed-in windposts were also retrofitted to masonry panels of the school’s gymnasium to provide the necessary strength.
Council response
CEC Chief Executive Andrew Kerr said in a press release yesterday:
We set out clear and thorough terms of reference so [Professor Cole] could identify the reasons for the wall collapse at Oxgangs and the subsequent building faults that forced us to close the 17 schools.
The report pulls no punches and makes clear what went wrong, the reasons for it and where responsibility lay. Clearly there are lessons for the Council and I will now be drawing up an action plan to take our recommendations forward to ensure everyone can have confidence in the safety of all of our buildings.
… The Council, our public and private sector partners both in Scotland and across the United Kingdom, need to take on board the issues raised and address the concerns highlighted in the report as they have far-reaching implications for the construction industry.
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David McFarlane Building Standards and Planning are very under staffed and Government have made them adopt dangerous self certification procedures to save money
David Sterratt @DavidSterratt
@theSpurtle Glad council held out against ESP's attempt to reopen schools with exclusion zones in case of high winds... (para 5.14.32)
