By Gavin Skelly (Founder at Fire Aware)
The concept of Fire Aware was created in 2019 following Dame Judith Hackitt’s plea that the construction industry positively change its culture following the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. The organisation’s founder Gavin Skelly FCIOB, having 35 years experience of the contracting industry recognised that the behaviours of those with a fire safety duty of care was something that needed to be examined and tackled if this change was to happen. While there was an undisputable need for change in the science and regulation of fire safety, there is also a need to ensure those using those rules and regulations recognised that using them in the spirit in which they had been written was equally important. The Grenfell Inquiry told of systemic failings in the regulatory and commercial sectors invoking the race to the bottom in many of the contributing issues that combined to create the disaster. In the case of Grenfell Tower, these failings spread wider than just the contractors carrying out refurbishment works. Fire Aware recognised that focusing only on the construction industry left out a wide spectrum of duty holders, so created an organisation that is open to any business with a fire safety duty of care. And critically, the organisation is open to clients as well as suppliers. There is much evidence in the fire sector of clients offsetting their responsibility to subcontractor’s and specialists assuming that their duty of care transfers to the supplier via the appointment. There is also evidence that clients separate the responsibility of choosing suppliers from the budgetary workings of a business, and effectively can engage the race to the bottom while believing their risk is covered.Fire Aware therefore has been created to include clients and suppliers who are prepared to procure and trade responsibly under one umbrella, giving all within its membership an identity of businesses trading accountably. This is a huge USP in the post Grenfell era as this attitude was previously an invisible investment. Identifying this corporate ethic and uniting it with many other businesses who think the same way, provides an easily recognisable marque for the public to understand. Due to the bandwidth of companies who carry a duty of care, this marque can be seen in many different settings, becoming a common signal to the public that the holder is being tested on its behaviours. And in creating this unity and making it visible, it becomes a condition of sale in the minds of the purchaser making it more difficult for those who do not subscribe, to compete with those that do. This is how culture changes. By identifying responsible businesses and giving the purchaser the choice. And by extending the USP to the purchaser in return for making that choice, the marque rises vertically up the supply chain until it emerges into the public conscience.
Fire Aware has the ability to change culture, much in the same way that the CCS changed the image of construction over the last 20 years. By giving those companies and individuals with the integrity to only do the right thing a common identity, the organisation has provided the public with trust mark in an industry where much faith has been lost. This process can only support regulatory compliance and help the statutory authorities navigate the difficult landscape the fire sector can be. Fire Aware is not about what you do as a business specifically. Its more about how you behave when doing it, and the more responsibility we can bring into the sector, the quicker cultural change will follow.
