Why fire safety must take account of culture and compliance

It has been eight years since the Grenfell Tower fire sent shockwaves through the built environment professions, and in that time we’ve seen rapid reforms in the UK and beyond.

In the UK, the Building Safety Act 2022 and Fire Safety Act 2021 have dramatically reshaped the responsibilities of owners, developers, surveyors and contractors.

But Australia too has overhauled regulation, in response to the Shergold Weir report on the building surveying profession and a string of high-profile incidents. These include the 2014 Lacrosse building fire in Melbourne, where combustible cladding fuelled a rapid facade blaze, and the 2018 structural failures at Sydney's Opal Tower, which forced residents to evacuate shortly after occupation.

Yet despite this new-found rigour, one uncomfortable question persists: are we merely becoming better at compliance, or are we genuinely building safer places?

High-risk buildings, especially those of more than 18m, must now have a golden thread of digital safety information that follows the asset from planning to handover and beyond.

While federal in its approach, Australia has likewise seen a tightening of building safety rules through the National Construction Code (NCC) and state-led initiatives. NCC 2022 introduced mandatory sprinkler systems for early childhood centres in high-rise buildings, unless there is direct egress to a road or open space or they represent the sole use of buildings no higher than two storeys. The code also imposes tougher controls on laminated cladding.

The states of New South Wales and Victoria have established auditing and enforcement mechanisms empowered to withhold occupancy certificates and name and shame non-compliant builders.

Other jurisdictions including Queensland and Western Australia, though, have been slower to implement reforms, reflecting the fragmented and state-led nature of building regulation in Australia.

That said, Queensland is the only state or territory explicitly to ban the use of non-conforming building products, which it did through legislative amendment in 2017.

The amendment defines a non-conforming product as one that is unsafe – thereby capturing, for example, cladding material containing more than 30% polyethylene core by mass – unsuitable for its intended use or falsely represented as meeting applicable regulatory or technical standards.

In most cases, this refers to products that do not comply with the NCC or are installed in a way that departs from approved documentation. This broadened the scope of accountability across the construction sector and positioned Queensland as a national leader in regulatory intervention.

In both countries, there is also a renewed emphasis on competence. In England, all building control professionals must now be registered and overseen by the BSR, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are progressing with reforms to their own frameworks. RICS also formally elevated Fire safety to a core competency on the building surveying pathway in 2018.

In Australia, similar upskilling efforts have been made following the Shergold Weir report's recommendation that professional knowledge and accountability must be strengthened at all levels.

Some developers in England have reportedly rescoped their projects to avoid gateway two thresholds, deliberately designing buildings just below the 18m limit.

Meanwhile, the slow pace of cladding remediation in certain jurisdictions of Australia has left thousands of residents still living in buildings with known life-safety risks.

One has to ask: has the pendulum swung too far towards documentation and process? The golden thread is a powerful concept, but are project teams empowered to use it as a living record or is it just another compliance artefact to be filed away? Do building safety managers and fire engineers have the resources and mandate to influence outcomes, or are they too often treated as post-facto signatories?

There are also concerns about enforcement. While the regulatory framework has hardened, the bodies responsible for oversight have a long way to go to scale up their capabilities.

Skilled inspectors, fire safety engineers and facade experts are in short supply. This raises the risk that the new system becomes overwhelmed, undermining its intent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also being used to scan building plans to check code compliance and predict system failures before they occur. Drones meanwhile are inspecting facades, and connected sensors are monitoring real-time fire-risk indicators.

Yet this reliance on technology raises a new set of questions. What happens when the AI gets it wrong? Who is liable if an automated system fails to give an alert or misinterprets data?

Is there even a threat that these tools will lull us into a false sense of assurance and lead to 'risk homeostasis'? (This is the tendency for people to take greater risks when they feel more protected, like driving a car faster because it has advanced safety features.)

Technological progress must be matched by critical thinking. A digital record is only as useful as the judgement applied to it. The profession needs to treat digital tools as augmentations, not replacements, for experienced eyes and thoughtful interpretation.

In the UK this shift has resulted, for instance, in the Responsible Actors Scheme and the leaseholder protections that force developers and owners to bear the cost of fixing historic defects.

In Australia, a similar cultural pivot can be seen, where the establishment in New South Wales of the Building Commission NSW as the regulator of the building industry, has placed renewed focus on public accountability and trust.

By actively naming non-compliant builders, withholding occupancy certificates, and engaging directly with owners corporations, the Building Commission NSW has helped reframe building safety as a public responsibility rather than a technical exercise.

Public trust is hard won and easily lost. It requires more than compliance; it demands transparency, responsiveness and a willingness to be held accountable.

RICS' decision to enshrine fire safety as a core competency recognises that chartered professionals play a critical role. Our responsibility is not just to clients, but to the public who occupy, visit or work in the buildings we assess.

Legacy buildings with unresolved safety issues are still occupied. Enforcement bodies remain under pressure. Changing the culture of the construction industry from cost-cutting to safety first is far from complete.

Meanwhile, new risks emerge. High-rise timber construction, electric vehicles, green technologies and battery storage systems all bring fresh fire safety considerations. As buildings become more complex and performance-dependent, the demands on surveyors and other built environment professionals will only increase.

There is hope, though. The convergence of regulatory reform, professional accountability and technological progress presents an unprecedented opportunity to embed safety in the built environment. But we must guard against reverting to the old culture of minimum compliance.

A safer future won't be achieved by ticking boxes. It will come from a mindset of curiosity, vigilance and ethical courage, asking not just 'Is this compliant?' but 'Is this safe?' and 'Would I be comfortable with my own family living or working here?'

As professionals, we must advocate for systems that value meaningful safety outcomes over procedural optics. That entails challenging poor practice, upskilling ourselves and others, and embracing technology without surrendering our judgement. It also means properly listening to the concerns of building occupants and the public.

If we can do that, perhaps we will look back on this time not just as the decade after the Grenfell Tower fire but as the beginning of a new age of responsibility in the built environment.