On June 14th 2017, a fire broke out at Grenfell Tower, a high-rise residential block in northwest London, and claimed the lives of 72 people. The subsequent inquiry found fundamental failings at every stage of the building safety process, from construction, to regulation, inspection, and emergency response. In reaction, the UK government launched a review of hundreds of buildings across the country and have already found the same or similar problems in many modern buildings. The owners of units within the affected buildings face huge financial hardship and while blame is spread widely, the construction industry is firmly in the spotlight.  “In the analysis that we’ve done, about 90% of modern buildings contain combustible elements in the facade, and about 60% of those fail The Cladding External Wall System 1 (EWS1) with a B2 grade,” Matt Hodges-Long, Founder of the Buildings Safety Register, told the BBC. “So that’s thousands of buildings across the UK, we haven’t […]