News - Falling Masonry
Keeping Croydon Developments Safe
5 October 2010
Schal Advises Croydon Companies: “Use Competent Persons for Building Condition Surveys".
Croydon based Schal has issued important advice to local facilities managers, property managers and persons engaged in the care of property under contract to property owners on the importance of using professionals for Building Condition Surveys.
Schal experts highlight that when commissioning condition assessments of buildings and building services, companies must consider their duty of care to use persons with suitable qualifications and experience. They will need to ensure that surveyors and engineers selling their services to them have the appropriate skills to make a judgement on condition. This may be critical in the occurrence of a catastrophic event, which causes harm to building users in the client’s employ, visitors to the property or users of the public highway adjacent to the property.
“If we take the example of incidents of masonry falling from buildings, causing injury or death to passers-by you may be surprised to find that this is not as rare an occurrence as you might like to think,” says Head of Building Survey, Phil Neenan. “There are a number of examples over the last ten years which have occurred in various cities within the UK.” A few examples are listed below:-
- June 2000 – a waitress was killed when masonry fell from a building in Edinburgh’s City Centre.
- January 2002 – a 45 year old mother was killed by a piece of stone which fell 12 metres from a church roof.
- March 2002 – a 59 year old man was killed by stonework which fell off a building in the Centre of Glasgow as he walked along Parnie Street.
- August 2003 – a toddler died when a wall only 1metre high fell onto him as his grandfather lifted him over it to retrieve his ball from neighbouring land.
- November 2007 – a two year old boy was killed when a wall owned by the Council toppled on to him when walking home from toddler group with his nanny in Belsize Park, London.
This list is not exhaustive and there are many more examples of events where victims were injured, not killed and where nobody was harmed.
“The objective of the property carer is therefore in being as diligent as possible in taking all measures to ensure that the risks of such incidents are mitigated as far as reasonably possible by using competent persons to carry out inspections,” Neenan continues. “A condition survey is a good way of demonstrating that diligence.”
There are requirements in H&S law to appoint competent persons, highlights TPS. For example, Regulation 6 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, 1999, states the requirement for the competence of people whom employers appoint to assist them in matters affecting health and safety. It is this aspect of your duty of care that you need to be mindful of should an accident occur. You will need to have put in place all reasonable measures to prevent an occurrence.
Should the unthinkable happen and a piece of masonry, or a flag pole, or a roof slate detaches itself from one of your buildings and harms a passer-by you may have to prove that you have taken all reasonable steps to effect your duty of care. It may be impossible to prove in any enquiry that the accident could have been prevented by engaging a competent person to carry out the survey, but if it were proven that the person you engaged was not competent you may find it difficult to argue that you carried out your duty in accordance with law. Thus, if your survey of the roof fabric was carried out a year before the accident, but was signed off by a mechanical engineer instead of a building surveyor, this might have serious consequences on your defence.
Professional surveyors will never guarantee that tragic events such as those examples above are totally avoidable simply by carrying out inspections on a periodic basis. Building fabric can deteriorate significantly in short periods of time. High winds, freeze and thaw cycles, lightning damage and other weather extremes can change the condition of structures from stable to dangerous. However professional surveyors will use their best endeavours to mitigate that risk.
Professional consultancy carries Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII), which covers financial claims against the insured and the cost to defend those claims in court. Most PII policies require that persons carrying out tasks under that insurance cover will be competent. If that is not the case, you effectively have no insurance. Therefore when engaging professional services you must ensure that the provider of services has PII. The level of cover available in PII is a function of the premium. You should check that that is at least to the level that is required in the contract by the ultimate client. This is a very important point to remember, because if you engage a surveyor who has a level of cover that is less than that required in the contract you may be in breach.
Let’s work together, use competent persons for Building Condition Surveys, and keep Croydon developments SAFE.
Schal offers building surveying services to companies across Croydon and the UK, as well as on many international projects. Schal has extensive experience in carrying out condition surveys on both M&E and Building fabric. Our surveyors are competent, having appropriate experience and qualifications in their relevant disciplines. Our QA certification is specifically for building surveying. TPS will tick those boxes that will satisfy any audit against the contract both from a commercial and a litigious perspective.
