On 4 October, the Society of Construction Law and the Institution of Civil Engineers hosted a joint event aimed at looking at the practical impacts of the Building Safety Act. The event was a sell-out. Patently the construction industry is keen to understand how things will work in practice.

Dame Judith Hackitt (whose independent review of building regulations and fire safety led ultimately to the Building Safety Act) gave an excellent keynote speech reminding us about the Flixborough disaster in 1974, which killed 28 and seriously injured 36 of the 72 people on site. That disaster involved a swift equipment modification where although virtually all of the plant management had chemical engineering qualifications, there was no on-site manager with mechanical engineering expertise. Mechanical engineering issues with the modification were thus overlooked by the managers who approved it.

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