A new review by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has found that ageing infrastructure, increased incidents of extreme weather and squeezed budgets are all contributing to safety risks in the sector
Safety risks have increased, not decreased, in the eight years since the Grenfell Tower fire, says the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in a new review, Building Safeguards.
The design, construction, maintenance and re-purposing of our built assets requires critical safety knowledge. The review challenges the industry to put systems in place to ensure suitably qualified specialists perform crucial tasks.
Civil engineers must also use their expertise to challenge the safety and degradation of assets in light of changing climate conditions and physical use.
The review also outlines an action plan to address safety risk challenges and says that the institution has committed to appointing a trustee to oversee progress and report on it annually.
Why is the UK’s infrastructure less safe?
The age of the UK’s infrastructure, the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events, the intensity of asset use and the increasing need to repurpose assets – rather than build new – to keep carbon emissions low, are all contributing factors.
These factors are exacerbated by maintenance budgets being squeezed.
A step change is needed to address these challenges across the sector, says the institution.
To that end, the review’s proposed action plan sets out how to achieve significant and rapid improvement in addressing safety risk challenges across the civil engineering and infrastructure sector.
The action plan includes three strands: competence, learning from failure, and culture and practice.
Competence
There is a need to increase risk awareness across infrastructure professionals and ensure those in critical roles are suitably qualified and experienced.
There should be more focus on maintenance skills, repurposing assets, and safely extending the life of assets.
Specific recommendations include creating practical continuing professional development (CPD) materials to help front-line practitioners apply common tools and frameworks to ensure effective safety risk management and investigating whether additional specialist registers should be created for higher-risk areas.
These recommendations will complement the recent decision taken by the ICE’s Trustee Board to make safety risk management a mandatory CPD topic for members to maintain professional registration. Further details about mandatory CPD will be communicated later this year.
The importance of maintenance is also gaining traction.
The ICE highlighted that the UK government’s 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy’s ’strong focus on maintenance’ was a positive to acknowledge in its response on 19 June.
Learning from failure
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry highlighted deep-seated cultural and operational flaws throughout the wider construction industry which have hindered best practice being applied.
To combat this, ICE members and the wider sector should encourage a working culture that promotes proactively identifying and applying lessons from failures and near-misses.
Additionally, institutions like the ICE must challenge harmful practices that prevent civil and infrastructure engineers from applying their knowledge to improve safety.
For example, the review says that the ICE should encourage clients and supply chain businesses to overcome barriers that prevent employees from using confidential reporting systems, like CROSS UK, which is supported by the ICE.
Culture and practice
The construction industry’s reaction to the Grenfell Tower disaster has been widely criticised. Bold leadership is needed to spur change.
Acknowledging past failures and embracing the need to do things differently will improve practice and trust in the sector.
The action plan suggests commissioning a further review to examine how other higher-risk sectors support ethical development as part of CPD and producing industry guidance documents to set out defined norms for key areas.
These documents would help clients understand the value of working with companies that employ professional qualified engineers.
A longer-term goal would be obtaining commitments from the government and major clients to embed these norms into procurement practices and delivery models.
“There’s no room for complacency”
Dr Janet Young, director general, ICE, said, “One of the core purposes of the ICE is to provide the knowledge civil and infrastructure engineers need to build, operate, and maintain infrastructure that is fit for purpose. Learning never stops, and we believe the ICE can help create the change the industry needs to better serve society. I look forward to working with ICE members and colleagues across the sector to implement this review’s recommendations and make real progress towards changing culture and improving transparency and trust.”
Paul Sheffield, ICE past president, and leader of the safety risk review, said, “Our safety risk review highlighted there are real challenges we have yet to address across the infrastructure sector. There’s no room for complacency; we need to get on with the tasks laid out in the action plan and makes changes that will improve safety for all.”
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