How safe is my School BBC1 Scotland

[ProDave]

BBC1 Scotland, Monday 22nd August 7PM  (viewers outside Scotland will need Sky or Freesat to view it)

 

Last year there was s spate of school walls collapsing on PFI funded school buildings, due to inadequate wall ties.  This program investigates what went wrong. They now think other public buildings as well as schools may faulty.

 

[AliG]

My house was built with the bracing missing from the roof. On one house the roof wasn't tied to the house. It could have blown off.

 

NHBC and building control were useless. Eventually we had to get a surveyor to write up a report at which point the builder re roofed the affected houses.

 

Meanwhile when I build an extension or conservatory, building control goes over every little thing in pedantic detail.

 

It makes you wonder that they put very little effort into checking what is being done by big developers. I think that they allowed the PFI contractors to self certify without going through building control, is that right?

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

BBC1 Scotland, Monday 22nd August 7PM  (viewers outside Scotland will need Sky or Freesat to view it)

 

Last year there was s spate of school walls collapsing on PFI funded school buildings, due to inadequate wall ties.  This program investigates what went wrong. They now think other public buildings as well as schools may faulty.

 

I thought it was one wall at one school, then investigations into similar projects?

 

Did I misunderstand?

 

I think we can listen online here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone?area=scotland

 

Ferdinand

[ProDave]

I think only one wall actually fell down, but they since closed half of Aberdeens's schools for investigation and remedial work and now they think other public buildings may have the same faults.

 

Yes it does beg the question, what were building control doing. As far as I know, private building control is not an option in Scotland, at least not for private dwellings, so it points to a failing by building control for not spotting the failing by the builders?  Should be an interesting program.
 

[Crofter]

In a similar incident, a whole load of new PFI schools were built a few years ago in the Western Isles. One morning the staff turned up to find a big atrium rooflight lying in pieces on the floor. As the same design had been used in most of the schools, they all had to be shut for a few days.

Not quite as bad as the school in Edinburgh where a lassie was killed, but of course it could have been pretty bad. So not an isolated problem.

[curlewhouse]

When that incident was first shown on TV I'm sure I wasn't alone in immediately saying out loud "wall ties" - despite me being by no stretch of the imagination a builder! So it seems staggering that no one working on the site would have raised the issue as it's so basic, and surely any bricky worth his salt would have thought it was odd while working that he was only putting in very few (if any) wall ties? So it seems very, very strange to me.   I mean even forgetting about building control, (it's funny isn't it because we are building our own homes so build way more carefully than someone for who it's just another task to get done, but we are watched like hawks, yet if you watch what goes into the build on a big developers site you wonder if BC ever go near) I'm sure any one of us if present when those walls were being built would have asked the question.  Very odd.

Edited August 28, 2016 by curlewhouse

[ProDave]

When I lived down south and had a "proper job" the unit I worked at was being extended. Mostly a metal clad industrial unit it had a brick facade above the entrance.  the shiny new brickwork looked very nicely done. Next day they took it all down, brick by brick and started building it again. Aparently building control had failed it because the width of the cavity was wrong.

 

As you say, in this case someone wasn't looking.