A fire safety expert has urged the construction industry to clearly spell out what materials have been used in buildings to help emergency services deal with dangerous situations more effectively.

Two years on from the Grenfell Tower fire in which 72 residents lost their lives Nick Coombe, strategic technical advisor for the London Fire Brigade, told a Building Live Club conference looking at how the industry might implement the recommendations of the Hackitt review that firefighters needed detailed information when they turned up to deal with a fire.

But often the data on materials used in a building’s construction was not available, Coombe said. “They [firefighters] ask ‘how can the industry not know what goes into a building?’. If you look at the aviation authorities, they know every bolt and screw that goes into an aeroplane. As an industry the construction sector has got to get better at this sort of thing.”