星空传媒

I went; I stood in the street. I looked in real life at Grenfell Tower. Horrid. And I felt frightened.

Odd word? Our industry, this building and civil engineering industry, is hell-bent on doing a good job. Nobody, not a single person in construction, would ever dream of putting those residents of Grenfell in harm鈥檚 way. Frightened? Yes, because this horrid event 鈥� and the fact that upwards of 220 buildings (and counting) elsewhere are seriously in similar doubt 鈥� takes me to a point of saying that we are doing something very wrong, every day. 

Grenfell wasn鈥檛, isn鈥檛 a piece of one-off negligence, nor a one-off mistake; it looks to be ordinary building work, ordinary procurement, for umpteen buildings. All the brains, all the industry reports, all the gurus coax us to produce good stuff, and we think that we are. We鈥檙e not. Not if what went wrong was the ordinary way we procure our buildings! 

I have in front of me a first-class letter sent out by the Department for Communities and Local Government. It travelled to local authority folk across the land. This letter is headed 鈥淩ECLADDING OF TALL 星空传媒S鈥�,