Much ink has been spilled chronicling the catalogue of errors that led to the Grenfell disaster.
The recently published final report from the inquiry set out in detail the chain of failures which culminated in the tragedy of June 2017, from the misuse and mis-categorisation of combustible cladding materials to a continued failure to enforce fire safety and compartmentation measures.
A number of measures, ranging from the Building Safety Act 2022 to a host of new fire safety rules, have been implemented since, and landlords and developers around the country have invested millions into completing extensive remediation works to remove the type of cladding that allowed the fire to spread.
However, errors in the construction industry remain a major problem in the UK, accounting for 10%-25% of project costs and for £10bn-£25bn annually. Such retroactive measures will only go so far without a concerted attempt to understand why such mistakes occur in the first place.
Identifying this was a driving factor behind our recent study: Architects’ use of intuition in site analysis: Information gathering in solution development. Through the qualitative analysis of data collected from in-depth interviews with over 20 subjects, we sought to explore how the way in which architects approach problems can lead to shortcuts being taken in building design.
One key finding was that building designers can sometimes make mistakes by reusing what worked in previous projects without actually checking if it is still the best approach. This is often driven by ‘intuitive substitution’, a thought process through which an individual replaces a difficult question with one where an answer can be reached more easily.
“Building designers can sometimes make mistakes by reusing what worked in previous projects without actually checking if it is still the best approach” Diana Osmolska
.... to continue see the article.