Reply to: Mercedes End Sponsorship

[vetran]

It's high time accountants were kicked out of building decision making and actual engineers who know what they want were put back in charge. I doubt I'll see it during my lifetime, but it's what needs to happen.

I may be slightly biased here...

That is what Building inspectors and fire brigade officers were for. The Government managed them out and turned it over to the private sector and then the storm of stuffed brown envelopes began.

Accountants are supposed to push price down, certification and customer feedback push back.

I was presented with some racks the engineering team had designed to the accountants wants cheap as chips & light so shipping costs fall. I basically suggested they would have been more sturdy if they had made them out of tin foil, the metal was so thin it was nearly transparent. The customer actually laughed when they were presented a quick redesign followed. I have spent weeks re-engineering kit to get it through approvals, pushing plastic fingers at holes in the case does save lives.

[Lost It]

Notwithstanding Kingspan are "out there" as one of the biggest, if not the biggest suppliers of cladding.

I still believe that this is all about avoiding blame because someone, somewhere "value engineered" the right stuff out of the contract. It happens all the time within the building industry, the bean counters start chipping away at contracts to make the prices more palateable and what happens is eventually it all goes too far and worst case people die. In other cases cars get melted by sunlight or windows fall off of buildings on windy days.

Someone did that with Grenfell, some other "bean counter" signed it off and they are doing their absolute best to do what is absolutely the wrong term to use, "smoke screen" what they did out of existence.
The fact that the fire breaks weren't used, the window frames weren't correctly installed, the quality and sign off of the piss poor standards used to install it seem to have been lost somewhere and is all a part of it. It's yet to come out but some one. or a group of people made the decision to get the job done as cheaply as possible, and if you are trying to tell me they didn't know about the qualities of the cladding used, or the standards that were in place then you have to admit to believing in father Xmas because I can guarantee they knew exactly what they were about.

Kingspan might well have "fuddled" the fire results, they are not the people that told the building firm to use it, they are suppliers. They can advise IF they are asked. Any engineer can read spec sheets, but ultimately many are ham strung by QS's.

It's high time accountants were kicked out of building decision making and actual engineers who know what they want were put back in charge. I doubt I'll see it during my lifetime, but it's what needs to happen.

I may be slightly biased here...

[vetran]

But it also seems the KS products were a very small fraction of the cladding and not the major cause of the blaze? It does rather seem they are being made a scapegoat in this story; "Mercedes is sponsored by the company responsible for Grenfell" is the implication.

Agree they aren't the only ones guilty but it does seem they are guilty. Plenty more to come.

As I said before I want the government to admit they should have policed this.

[d000hg]

But it also seems the KS products were a very small fraction of the cladding and not the major cause of the blaze? It does rather seem they are being made a scapegoat in this story; "Mercedes is sponsored by the company responsible for Grenfell" is the implication.

[vetran]

If they were aware of the discrepancy, I agree. I don't know how that is monitored and controlled so am unwilling to put the blame there without more information.

I think using a safety factsheet that applies to a different product formulation is why people are less than happy with Kingspan. There has to be an element of trust in such things and they betrayed that.

K15 (disguised as K6 to abuse official testing results) was not suitable for high rise that is clear in the technical documents (note neither was K6).

Germany spotted the problem and banned similar stuff.

There are a number of manufacturers doing this - it appears an open secret.

[TheDude]

He did not need to go to Switzerland in order to reduce his taxes (he was earning enough surely), yet he did it.

Dude - you do realise that this is a contractor forum and that many contractors attitudes to tax efficiency would be considered pathological by your typical tax exile.

[ladymuck]

yep slightly disingenuous.

However our building inspectorate should have banned such material in such circumstances.

If they were aware of the discrepancy, I agree. I don't know how that is monitored and controlled so am unwilling to put the blame there without more information.

I think using a safety factsheet that applies to a different product formulation is why people are less than happy with Kingspan. There has to be an element of trust in such things and they betrayed that.

[vetran]

I think there's some shiftiness about their testing and product formulation that one could argue would lead a building contractor to select their product without having full access to the all the facts.

According to this
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/king...111087.article

yep slightly disingenuous.

However our building inspectorate should have banned such material in such circumstances.

[ladymuck]

Reading the actual story, it seems that Kingspan are not actually to blame for Grenfell. Their products just happened to be used there and were not responsible for the fire? If so then this would appear to be somewhat a misleading controversy. Or is this misreported?

I think there's some shiftiness about their testing and product formulation that one could argue would lead a building contractor to select their product without having full access to the all the facts.

According to this
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/king...111087.article

...
The inquiry has already heard that the version of Kingspan’s K15 insulation, which was found to have been included in the cladding system of Grenfell Tower after the fire which claimed 72 lives in June 2017, on the market was also different to what had been tested.

Kingspan had changed the chemical composition of the insulation in 2006, a year after the successful 2005 fire test which was then used in the product’s marketing literature for nearly fifteen years before the test report was withdrawn in October last year.

A 2007 fire test of the newer, changed version of K15 had turned a laboratory into a “raging inferno” which had to be extinguished before the end of the test out of fears that it would endanger the laboratory.

...

[d000hg]

Reading the actual story, it seems that Kingspan are not actually to blame for Grenfell. Their products just happened to be used there and were not responsible for the fire? If so then this would appear to be somewhat a misleading controversy. Or is this misreported?

[SueEllen]

d000hg stop it!

[d000hg]

He did not need to go to Switzerland in order to reduce his taxes (he was earning enough surely), yet he did it.

Do us a favour and go back to Russia.

[AtW]

Hamilton doesn't need to. He's in the history books anyway.

He did not need to go to Switzerland in order to reduce his taxes (he was earning enough surely), yet he did it.

[d000hg]

Hamilton doesn't need to.

He's in the history books anyway.

AtW is just thinking that's what he'd do. Anyone who follows F1 knows Hamilton wears his heart on his sleeve - for better or worse.
The thing I find more remarkable is he's able to do all this stuff and still operate at the very top level as a sportsman.

[SueEllen]

Woke as in cynically exploiting that topic for his personal benefit.

Hamilton doesn't need to.

He's in the history books anyway.