Peter Hansford led a panel of industry experts in reviewing the whole-life risks to economic infrastructure in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
The report examines three critical areas to strengthen the lines of defence against infrastructure failure.
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The first of those, Hansford said, was a need to share lessons from concerns, near misses and failures.
He said: “The sector lacks both a sufficiently consistent public safety culture and an efficient approach to learning from incidents and near misses, both in an asset’s construction and operation.
“Within this, we need to look at empowering the voice of the professional, enabling them to raise concerns through appropriate channels.”
Hansford, who said the Morandi Bridge collapse in Genoa has thrust the issue of infrastructure failure further into the spotlight, also called for better ways to deliver and ensure competence, including a more robust approach to validating Continued Professional Development (CPD) for both ICE and other professional bodies.
And he advocated improving the way in which infrastructure assets are governed, with some owners not knowing enough about their assets’ conditions, nor taking seriously enough the capture and maintenance of data throughout the life of the asset.
“Economic pressure, prioritisation of capital cost savings over whole-life value, and narrowly-designed contract incentives can create unintended outcomes that increase risks further,” he added.
Spanning all of these areas though, was the need to fortify the voice of the engineer, he said.
“Our infrastructure assets, whether in their construction or operation, comprise of multiple interacting, complex systems that naturally generate risk.
“Being able to understand and address those system-wide risks at both a corporate and individual level is vital, with the engineer playing a stronger part in whole-life asset stewardship.
“It is for us, as professionally qualified civil engineers, to be ever diligent and always critical so that risks do not stay hidden in plain sight,” he said.
