An uncomfortable read: Why The Grenfell Tower Phase 2 Inquiry Report needs to be both noted and actioned

 

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report was issued in early September[1]2024, and the 48-page Executive Summary makes for some truly distressing reading. The stark summary of what happened in the lead-up to this appalling fire and horrific loss of life reveals an abhorrent culture that has developed in a significant sub-section of the construction industry and how it has pervaded attitudes, behaviours, and actions of those working in a variety of types of organisation that spanned both the private and the public sector.

 

In reading the Phase 2 Inquiry Report, it becomes clear and evident that the opportunity to step-in and take action that could have avoided the Grenfell Tower fire was present for many years and could have been taken by organisations responsible for the production of materials through to the certification of project-specific solutions.

 

As the legal, regulatory, and possible criminal ramifications from the Public Inquiry are still being considered by others, it is not for this article to speculate on the specific consequences but what we can, and indeed must, do is to use this official report to stop and take stock of how we are dealing with those situations and circumstances where we either have concerns, or where we can see that important issues are accepted without challenge and being taken for granted. Stopping and questioning everything we do in our professional lives isn’t practical, but we could adopt a simple policy:

• Where there is a concern we should raise it – even if it not our responsibility

• When a concern is raised it should be dealt with properly, based on its merits not on its origin.

 

Those in senior positions of organisational leadership and critical decision-making need to be particularly aware of the responsibility that they have in ensuring that their organisation does all that it can to “do no harm”.  The Phase 2 Inquiry Report makes it clear that risks were being created and not dealt with. This failure to identify and manage knowable and identifiable risk is something that organisations should address. We can never eliminate all risks, but we can strive to consider, manage, and mitigate those risks that we have taken the time and trouble to identify or which have been pointed out to us.

 

It simply shouldn’t be the case, that in the twenty-first century and with all the evidence and lessons that we have and we can learn, that some organisations set out with knowing intent to do harm or allow harm to be done. We owe it to those who have suffered so horribly in and by the Grenfell Tower fire, that we do better.

 

[1] See: https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/phase-2-report, issued September 2024