Featuring a speaker line up including Dame Judith Hackitt and renowned journalist and author Peter Apps, Harmony Fire’s latest Housing Leaders’ Summit moved to Edinburgh, as The Scotsman Hotel played host to a day of learning, collaboration and sharing best practice.
Themed around the subject of innovation, keynote speaker and author of the independent review on Building Regulations following the Grenfell Tower disaster, Dame Judith Hackitt set out the context for the day. Although Scotland has not had its own Grenfell tragedy, the risk to life from fire remains an ever-present danger across all areas of the United Kingdom – there is no place for complacency.
In a wide-ranging and powerful keynote session, Dame Judith provided insight into her role leading the response to Grenfell, alongside her assessment of progress and views on faster implementation of measures to reduce risk for residents. Sharing international examples of best practice that could provide a model for change in Scotland and across the United Kingdom, Dame Judith stressed the importance of organisational culture in driving behaviours and actions that prioritise risk mitigation based on sound evidence, not compliance checklists.
Peter Apps, award winning author of the best-selling book ‘Show me the bodies: How we let Grenfell happen’, led the audience through successive decisions that compounded to turn a single flat fire into a disaster that engulfed a West London tower block and killed 72 innocent people in 2017. In a message to the audience of Scottish housing sector leaders, Peter sought to highlight that although synonymous with combustible cladding, Grenfell is also a story of multiple failings, including the catastrophic role of fire doors that were incorrectly installed and did not perform to expectations.
Peter left the audience with an image of black elephants, to represent those risks that are known about, but are often labelled as too difficult or costly to resolve. Crossing your fingers and hoping that tragedy doesn’t strike is not a risk management strategy that will protect your residents.
Bringing innovation front and centre during the panel discussion was Elaine Armitage, Assistant Director of People and Property Safety at Together Housing Group, demonstrating how blending technology and organisational culture can deliver outsized benefits for resident safety. Elaine shared smart examples of the use of facilities management data that helped drive new and improved tenant engagement behaviours and stressed the importance of the resident voice in all decision-making.
Ged Moore, Managing Director at Auro, which recently launched the world’s first fully integrated and certified Internet of Things (IoT) fire door spoke about the scale of the issue of stagnant data, information collected and then underutilised in organisations. His message was not to overcomplicate innovation but apply it strategically to areas where its use can lead to transformational outcomes for resident safety, resource allocation and cost efficiencies.
Lee Goodenough, CRO at Harmony Fire, commented: “Although regulations differ across the devolved nations, the clear message from our event was that with such a fragmented sector, we need to shine a light and elevate those individuals and organisations that embrace a life safety innovation culture as an example for others to follow.
“Bringing together senior leaders from across the sector with expert and inspirational speakers is one of the ways that we can facilitate vital knowledge sharing and spark the conversations that have such a profound impact on the future direction of the housing industry. The passion for change and transformation is clear from the reactions in the room and the challenge for us all is to maintain the impetus for collaboration and restless assurance when we consider the safety of residents in Scotland and beyond.”