 I welcome to the second meeting of the committee in 2019. I'd like to remind members in the public to turn off their mobile phones and any members accessing committee papers by electronic devices to make sure that they're turned to silent. We have received apologies today from Stuart McMillan MSP and I'd like to welcome Sandra White MSP again to the meeting today. The first item of business on the agenda is an evidence session with two fire experts on the Glasgow School of Art inquiry. This is the last evidence session on the Glasgow School of Art and the committee will report on the issue in due course. I'd like to invite, welcome rather, Dawson Stelfox, conservation architect and consultant with CONSARC design group. I'd also like to welcome Stephen McKenzie, who is an independent fire security and resilience advisor. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us today. We have two panels today, so we're very, very pushed for time. If I could ask, and you can see we've got quite a few members, so if I could ask for questions and answers to be as succinct as possible and I don't want to interrupt people, but if I feel that you should be concluding I'll wave my pen and that's the polite way of saying we should move on. I'd like to start with an opening question. You both have had the opportunity to listen to the evidence from Glasgow School of Art and its architects and contractors in previous evidence sessions. A lot of our lines of questioning revolved around the compartmentation of the building and the existence of voids in the building, which the fire investigation after the 2014 fire showed had existed. We've elated to the fire and we've received evidence that the voids were pointed out to the art school by, I believe it was Stuart Kid, the fire expert when he toured the building with Historic Scotland as long ago as 1997. They were also highlighted in the Burrow-Happelt report around 2006. However, when we spoke to the architects' page in Park, it was clear that even after the first fire during the conservation, those ducts and the shafts had not been blocked. I wondered if both of you could perhaps give your expert opinion on the existence of the ducts, the fact that they weren't dealt with, whether you think that was a significant aspect that should have been addressed at an earlier stage. Can I focus on the work during the construction period? I think that, from reading the documents, it was planned to deal with the ducts as part of the works on completion, so they would have been fire-stopped. The missing bit, to me, seems to be from what I've been able to see before, is measures to protect fire spread during the construction process and that those ducts were not compartmented. In fact, I think that one of the care representatives has said that it was impractical to do so during that. To me, that brings up the focus of fire safety assessments during the construction period. At the moment, the statutory position in that is that a fire risk assessment has to be done, but the focus of that assessment, when you look at it, is on life safety, is on getting people out of the building in time and it's not on asset safety, it's not on protecting the building. I would suggest to you that it is worth the committee looking at changes to requirements in fire safety assessments during the construction period to also take into account fire assets, safety and fire spread through the building. It's not easy to do. I think that the care representatives said that those ducts were going to be used for services distribution. In other words, they were going to be capable pipes put in them during the course of the works. Therefore, fire stopping during construction is not an easy thing because it might continually be disrupted and have to be put back into place. I would suggest that there hasn't been enough focus on achieving compartmentation of fire stopping during the construction process. You are quite right that they talked about putting services through the ducts, but they also talked about conservation aspects as well. Obviously, they were Charles Rary Macintosh ducts and they were integral to the building. At the earlier stage in the Borough Hapel report, they also mentioned that it would be just too expensive to do the extent of fire stopping required. Was that an issue? Is it other issues around the conservation rules that stop us making unusual buildings like that safe in modern terms? I did read those comments, chair. Without being involved, it would be very difficult to say, but I would have suggested that, at the very least, the process should have gone through of seeing what was involved in doing it. Therefore, it would have had a detrimental effect on the heritage of the building, whether or not that got as far as being put to Historic Environment Scotland. For instance, it did not seem so. It seemed that it was ruled out very early on. It is important to put this in record that none of this is easy to do. Every historic building is unique. A lot of these ducts and things will be going through the building, will be not recorded in drawings, will be finding their way inside thick solid walls. Even finding the roots of all the voyage can be a difficult thing to do. Sometimes, because it is difficult, it becomes expensive and therefore gets ignored as part of it. I would suggest that the process goes right the way back to the original survey stages, to assessment stages, to doing risk management of the design stage and following that up with a strategy into the construction stage. However, in many historic fires, the interconnecting voids through the building become the sources of the fire rate. It is not just in the Macintosh School. That has shown up in other fires in the historic buildings as well. It is an area that seems to contribute greatly to the loss of heritage. Steve McKenzie, what is your view on that? I absolutely agree with Dawson's points in its entirety. I would like to add that having looked at the evidence bundle, I thank the committee for dispensation to continue the compilation of my written response given the time frames of my invite. Till today, there are only two weeks past over the holidays and also the complexities of the case. I am concerned not so much over what has been disclosed, but what has not been disclosed. For the public record, I am aware that, during the 1999 city architecture and design lighthouse project in Macintosh building, there were a number of site-based fires. I was an on-site engineer there and intervened on at least two with first aid firefight equipment. There was one significant cladding fire in the person who did that was dismissed for unauthorised works on actions. I do not see that being disclosed. I do not see the construction phase fire safety plan or the construction plan as required by the CDM regs. I also do not see any arson prevention threat assessment or addressing, so there are significant concerns about the voice errors and emissions in the current evidence pack that has been submitted and again suggest that there is potential need for a full detailed forensic investigation not only off the fire ground but also for all the project documentations, roles and responsibilities. As I did in 2014 and 2018, I am impressed upon the committee because of the complexity of those hearings that there is a case for a public inquiry to look at the issues, look at the wider context and then instigate the civil service with dialogue with the fire sector and conservation sector as to where we go next. It is in the backdrop of the on-going Scottish Bill and Standards review. Coming back to construction phase, I did work with Bureau Harpools but not on the Glasgow School of Arts risk assessments. I have made a full and transparent disclosure of any conflicts and interests, NDAs or security aspects which I am subjected to. However, as a professional and ethical fire engineer, I use a degree of latitude in the public interest. I am concerned about the recent reports in the press about the care construction failure to disclose the construction phase plans and some of the failures to disclose certain aspects. I am also for the public record stating that I have had sight of but have been asked to keep in confidence the source of a report from the HSC in 2015 which issued an adverse note of deficiency on the GSA site but I must note for the record that it was before care's appointment. I suggest that there is a need for additional detail of understanding of what the role and responsibility was for the three contractors identified in the evidence bundle and why that note of deficiency, given the two cases and the two case fires, has not been disclosed. I will just interrupt you there, the HSC notice of deficiency. Could you explain that a little bit? What does that mean? A note of deficiency under the construction, design and management regulations, in fact it is easy to go back a little bit. Under the guest report 1997 we have got three strands of health, fire, safety and building standards. One is dealt with local authority building controls under building standards, one is dealt with health and safety executive and construction standards and one is dealt with the specialist knowledge needed for fire safety standards. More recent legislation is the construction design and management regulation to 2007-2015, which requires construction phase, fire safety and construction phase plans. They are a formal statutory requirement and we have got the parallel requirement for fire safety and risk assessments on the client side and on the contractor side. The HSC notes of deficiency, they were either called in, I am not sure about the grounds for the inspection, but they conduct an inspection on site, I have seen the original emails and correspondence. They are available in the public domain so I do not see any reason for them not being disclosed publicly. You can get them through an FOI within 21 or 28 days. They should have been entered in but they do specifically raise concerns about fire safety on the GSA site from 2014-2015, deficiencies in the means of warning and some of the fire fighting provisions. From another sector contact fall into 2018, I believe but some substantiated that care construction was upgrading the on-site means of fire detection and warming from a manual system to an automatic system but I do not have any other details on a verbal. I just want to log that for a public domain. I have asked my source for the HSC disclosure to confirm that but they are reluctant to do so, hence I am directing. It is available through an FOI or committee request. Given the pressures of time, I am going to move on to Clare Baker. The missed suppression system, the evidence that we have heard for the decision taken to go ahead with that fire prevention system to be installed suggests that there was no other options. There were quite limited in terms of the design of the building. The evidence that we heard from Glasgow School of Art that this means all but one of the potential property fire protection options had been ruled out so there were left with the missed suppression as the argument that was made. Do you think that that is appropriate and in your opinion was that the correct decision to make to preserve that building? I think that there are major concerns about the ambiguity over the status of the proposed fast suppression works prior to 2014 fire and during the works leading up to the 2018 fire. The fast suppression water mist system is the contemporary system to be installed, especially in historic buildings. They use less water, the less damaging but provide an equal level of cover to more traditional wet based sprinkler systems. I categorically question the position that it was the only system. What we see in historic buildings, and I am going to refer to the National Naval Museum archives, we have a water based suppression system, but we also have a gasey suppression in the unoccupied archive areas because they are less damaging and they do not use water and it is easy to recover, so we have a mixed mode system. I also question the fact about the time frames for the implementation of the suppression system before 2014 and not buying the argument that there are asbestos. If a building is constructed before 2000, a year is required to have an asbestos plan and you can anticipate where it is and you can employ specialist contractors that can work in asbestos controlled areas, I categorically rebut their position. There are a number of erroneous positions and statements that will not stand up to ask about interrogation and I am going to press upon the hearing to recommend a full forensic examination. Coming back to sprinkler systems not to labour the point, I also question why they did not have phased installation given the building and its original design and construction was in two phases. The building lends itself to the undamaged wing plus the damaged wing being treated as two separate entities and linked back to the new tank areas. I do not buy it on the lead times, I do not buy it on bringing in pump sets towards the end of the project versus earlier and I do not understand why there was not temporary arrangements put in, not building why because that is quite challenging and cost prohibitive, but at least around the boundary of the damaged area to compensate for the compartmentation issues. Sprinkler suppression compensates for other deficiencies, predominantly compartmentation and that is why it is so important to have the guidance, the statutory requirement and the education of clients with historic buildings. Fogus on the last point that Steve is making there, which is about the compensation of suppression systems for lack of compartmentation. To me reading the reports they come to a conclusion that it was the only possible way even in 2014 when a lot of the building was intact seems to be a jump and I do not know whether that was taken up with the historic environments at the time. The reason given for not providing compartmentation seemed to be concerned about disruption to historic fabric. I suppose that how far that was investigated should be challenged because to immediately jump to say that you cannot put in compartmentation because of disruption to historic fabric therefore the only option as a suppression system seems to be a big jump. To me suppression is nearly the last thing you do after you have done your compartmentation and you are trying to reduce the spread of the fire. I would agree and add that what we try to do as professional fire engineers looking at the whole project and the end point, we start with the end point what we are trying to achieve in terms of risk reduction protection, historic asset etc. What we can do is actually in-build the fire dampers, the pipe runs and the instrument openings that we can run cables and pipe work through so you have actually got everything built in there at an early stage to compensate for the poor compartmentation and form the compartment lines whilst we also put in the fire suppression system which gives you an extra level of safety not only for life safety but for proper protection. It is the way to go through and we lag behind North America in the adoption of suppression based systems and holistic historic building protection and modern and contemporary fire engineering solutions. It is the issue of the historic building asset being given importance when it comes to doing a fire risk assessment. That is lacking I would say in the guidance and legislation in particular at the moment in that the focus is very much on life safety both during construction and even after that. It is starting to change the mindset to think about using fire safety measures and fire safety audits to long term protect historic fabric which is not a requirement at the moment. Individual owners may make it as a requirement but it is not a statutory requirement. It could be argued that because the art college is a working art college, you mentioned the naval museum which is a different type. One of the arguments that Glasgow School of Art has put forward consistently is that the building is a working art college and that is as important to the building as maintaining the historic fabric and the importance of the building itself. If we look back at the 2014 fire, the evidence that we heard from the college is that it was the fault of one individual student and that student, if they had been doing what they were told to do, the fire wouldn't have happened. Do you think that is a reasonable statement and that shows a responsible use of the building? No, I think that the idea that you can stop fires happening in buildings is fanciful, I would say. I noticed that there were statistics just put out the other day in terms of the numbers of construction site fires going up in recent years. One of the sharpest rises in that was actually deliberately started fires. So it's a matter of many precautions you put in terms of good practice in terms of hot works or electric works or temporary works. We have to accept that there will be fires in buildings, even deliberately started fires in buildings and therefore it's not possible to say just because people are told to behave in a particular way that means there won't be a fire. So I think that you do all the good practice, you give people all the advice, you do all the good practice in terms of site works and hot works and everything like that, but you still have to assume there are going to be fires in buildings. The first one was when the building, so it wasn't a construction site. No, but even so, there will still be a fire. I think that the augmented responses are generally working in complex environments such as hospitals, universities, historic buildings and the wide range. We can actually retrofit in buildings when they're still active in use. We can use night time crews and weekend crews. We even do that for a specific removal in live buildings. We can package it off smaller compartments, do the removals and turn it around overnight to have improved functionality. We also have a significant period of holidays when you look at the academic sessions and as a past academic. We only really teach for 30 to 35 weeks of the year. We can use those other weeks to retrofit and that's what we do. I had an assignment in King's College of London managing the entire proper portfolio, the summer works, the building works in half billion pound worth of capital development. If you've got a good fire engineer as per my paper on fire engineers throughout the life cycle of the building, we can help address the client. I do question that the client in the evidence plando hasn't been following the advice of their normally competent person, which is a major point from now on. I'm working for the University of Edinburgh at the moment and we have for the last number of years been retrofitting fire safety measures into some of their most historic buildings while the buildings are in use or during holiday times. It's difficult to do, involves a certain amount of decanting and disruption, but it's possible to do it. It's not impossible. The other thing is that Dawson is absolutely correct. The main thrust of our legislation throughout the UK and Europe in the developed world is life safety, but that doesn't remove the need to look at environmental protection, protection of operational firefighters entering the building for search and rescue or damage control or for any other person. So there is explicit life safety provisions, but there's implicit other fire safety objectives and under the risk-based regimes now, you're defective if you do not consider all risks and just look at life safety. Therefore, there needs to be a reinforcement within a legislation where it's historic building protection, where it's the main building standards review that Dr Paul Staller is doing following the Grenfell Tower fire and the on-going Hackett review. There are ways to do it. We can integrate a integrated safety and resilience standard, systems, operation, guidance, etc. We also need to make a decision about are we prepared to lose historic cultural assets or is there more we can do? We've got a lot of evidence coming out of America on how they actually do that. It does a lot of work on that in conservation. I dislike the term accident. We don't use that any more if you look at the connotation of a road traffic accident. We don't use that as a road traffic incident. The reason we don't like the use of accident, it suggests there's no portion of blame or failure. Whereas, although the student may have not followed policy and direction, there's also a supervision failure, therefore we call it an incident, which is not to be speculated on as Ms Gray objected to. What we do as a public credit criminal investigator is regenerate hypothesis for evidencing and testing from the documentary, the human witness statements, the CCTV or the physical on-site farm investigation evidence. Therefore, some positions are quite significant ones that need to be corrected. I'm also concerned about some of the apparent errors and omissions in our own innocent or misleading statements that came out of the evidence sessions today. That's why I believe that it needs an appointed either task group under a chair and a number of experts, because experts can agree, disagree and we can all say something else. It's the complexity issue, because there's different routes of compliance, but we can assist in that process. Can I just carry on with Clare Baker's line of questioning? As we understand it, the system that went in before the fire in 2014 largely survived that fire and then was ripped out, can you offer any thoughts as to why it would have been a good idea to have ripped that out? Do you think that if it had stayed in, it might have helped to alleviate the worst impact of the subsequent fire? I think that without actually speculating, we don't have enough evidence just now, but what we can see is that Macintosh was actually innovative in his design and use of modern technology and materials. Sprinklers have been around since the 1800s and they're not a new technology. Part of the problem is in historic buildings unless we have a change occupancy or a material alteration of the building, which then excludes, like for light changes, we don't need to have new building warrants and we don't need to upgrade existence to current standards. It's deemed to have satisfied to the standard in 1900s. You could have kept the old system in place. Is this aware of the story that was in The Times this morning? I haven't seen it, sorry. It simply reflects the evidence that Bill Gibb gave to the committee which relates to the miss suppression system being removed and the committee wasn't told it was removed after the first fire and I guess we're all puzzled as to why one would remove a system that was, as I understand or as the committee broadly understand it, survived that first fire and therefore presumably could have played a role thereafter. I'm also puzzled. Okay, let me put it the other way around. Do you think that there would have been a good argument for retaining that system until such time as other things were developed if that was your fire prevention proposal for the future? Categorically, I stated that there should have been a temporary or phased installation and that could have formed part of that basis. Therefore, I'm incredibly puzzled to now hear, without having time to adequately digest the evidence bundle and its minutia, that this has occurred and that is a particular line of question. The other point about, and you'll understand all this technical stuff when I will not, but the evidence today again cites the joint fire code. You'll be familiar with joint fire codes and I will not read you the quote because you will know it off by heart and that kind of thing. As far as I can see, it says that the high-pressure mist suppression system could have been activated during the key of works, commencing on 8 August 2016, protecting the Mac building during construction. Do you think that that's a fair observation? Yes, and I'm surprised at Dentecar. I would say that my experience is that it's not normal to have fire suppression during construction in this country. It's much more normal in America and Canada with maybe a prevalence of timber frame buildings and things more. So it's not a normal thing, but given the history and given the fact that there was a system there, it would have been, you would have thought it was something that should have been considered. So it would be a reasonable question for our committee to ask why that was taken out. Why was it taken out? I thought of a temporary fire suppression system. And just from your professional point of view, is there a logical reason as to why that system would have been taken out? I mean is there a good reason that we just don't foresee at this stage? The obvious one was it damaged, was it incomplete, was it fit for purpose for its nature of operations, falling of fire and another investigation. I think it's also important to draw the committee's attention to, although it's relatively uncommon. We definitely do phased installations, it's an automatic given that building. It's not unknown to have a temporary system and there's new products emerging on the market all the time including these new plug and play personal protection water mist systems. So if you've got a socket, we can install a tank, pump, detection, all self-contained or developed for vulnerable persons protection and we can use them in small compartments although they haven't been tested for that application as a fire engineer, I would argue the case. In the damage portion, put them in where you've got hot works and remedial works to reduce the risk within the building. Thank you. Sandra White. Thank you very much. Thank you committee for letting me come along. I just wanted to move along a wee bit to the cladding installation. Having questioned previously key construction, after much probing it was discovered that the same type of cladding was used in Grenfell, absolutely the same. So I would just like your expert opinion on that. I mean it's supposed to be there's space, you know better than me, and concrete at the bottom etc, obviously with timber there as well. So I just would like to, you know, your opinion on using that type of cladding, which has obviously been, you know, now it's a cheaper type and unfortunately the tragic situation in Grenfell, why would they use that type of cladding in that type of building? I think having spent 19 months on Grenfell pro bono in its entirety, I've just tweeted something on that because it's the question, it comes up time and time and time again. Rockville versus foam insulation and I've provided that. I made a statement this morning because somebody else asked me. The reason we can use it because it appears to comply with the tests and the standards at the time of construction. However, there is legal precedence through other cases which have been upheld. I could very quickly look at my phone but I won't detract time. There is a case of Shibat food factory down south where the architects specified, despite repeated warnings, a different type of expanded polystyrene insulation around the high-risk area. They were found to be deficient and grossly negligent for not falling other advice, for not adequately reducing the risks at source and not adequately considering the risks. Although the court appeal did reduce the damages against them from I think it was £25 million to £10 million, the company went bankrupt because it only had £5 million insurance cover and there's a big debate in the UK sector. I'm going to kill it today. If you can look at one product that gives you marginal benefit thermal performance but not necessarily cost benefit foam insulation against stone wool, which is the same performance requirement, might be slightly thicker to achieve the same performance, it is safer. It is safer, it's noncombustible. This is, as an Australian colleague and other material manufacturers have called, plastic petrol. It doesn't ignite under the tests and it won't ignite in most instances because it's got a concrete slab, it's got a UPVC layer but if you've got hot works or a sustained ignition through a fully developed fire, it's adding to the fuel load and a factor of magnitudes. Whereas rock will wouldn't, therefore I find as an expert, the design team's rationale it complied to be defective, they haven't considered the risks under the building standards, under the construction design and management regs and under the Far Scotland Act. If you fail on one point in our legislation you fail on multiple and I think that is where I want to leave it because of the on-going civil and criminal investigations but I will submit a formal written paper to clarify this once and for all. First of all I like rock wool as a material, I use it a lot, I see more I have to say for its breathability for moisture transference than for its fire pressures because in working with the story buildings you're always looking at for breathability and moisture movement but the fact that it is inert and it makes it a very good material for story buildings. In defence of the architects though I would say that if an architect is given a product which seems to comply with legislation then you can understand why that product in those particular circumstances gets specified. So I would say in the construction industry there's a lot of confusion around the performance of foam materials in particular in the composite layers where you're getting there. So a layer of foam buried within above a concrete roof or a fire resistance with a ceiling underneath most architects would not think that that's adding to the fire risk of the building if it is and the evidence is coming out that it is then that is certainly something that needs to come out more into the profession in terms of specifying. Post Grenfell obviously things are changing quite a lot in terms of understanding and that but it's how the products perform in complex composite layers I think is bit where there are uncertainties. I agree and I have also went on record in the Grenfell debate that the potential root cause and common cause failure of Grenfell plus 474 and a contributing factor in Glasgow school art was potentially a unknown defect in the advice and the tests and the compliance routes which resulted in Grenfell and 474. Dr Paul Stollard during the hearing, the evidence session to the communities and local government session following the Bill and Standards far and Bill and Standards review eluded that they had a very good understanding of where contractors, designers and specifiers have went wrong and it is eluded that if we have the far certificate, the far certification and accreditation process is to allow us to make rapid decisions that has been tested independently and it's safe. So we've got a number of multiple facet problems isn't just life-safe, historic Scotland, it's also fundamental Bill and Standards regimes. Thank you chair. Thanks very much. I think I need to move on if I'm going to get the other members in. I'm afraid. Jamie Greene. I think it's probably worth just taking a step back to look at the remit of what we're doing here. We're not here to identify the cause of the fire or a portion of blame or indeed make any explicit recommendations and changes to fire regulations but nonetheless a lot of these issues are coming out in the wash. Mr Mackenzie, I fully respect that you're an expert in this field but you have made some quite broad statements this morning. I just want to press on you. Are you suggesting that either in written or oral evidence that the committee has received today is part of the inquiry under the remit that it has that witnesses have either inadvertently or indeed purposefully withheld evidence from us? There appears to be an inference that that may be the case. There are significant gaps, errors and voids in the written evidence submission in the bundle. I am giving you a list of documents which are priority, which should have been submitted. The fire safety plan, the construction phase plan, the arson assessment should all have been in that bundle. Any disclosures of enforcement notices or notices deficiency should have been in that bundle. They do not appear to be so and I don't understand why because even if we've got active and ongoing investigations there's no life loss or injury in this one. It's a property protection and statutory failing. Therefore what I encourage clients in my personal opinion is to have full disclosure because courts are now starting to look at the conduct of parties and we can have sentencing and mitigation through early emissions of guilt through the sentencing council guidance. We have a one-third reduction. If you plead guilty at the first opportunity that tapers off with each opportunity to plead guilty and if you ultimately continue to plead not guilty but you are found, the penalties can be harsher. If you're obstructive or frustrated in an investigation or a public inquiry or a public hearing then or combative in your approach to it or found to feign disclosure but you actually haven't then the courts will rule and assign harsher penalties. We have seen that under fire law south of the border and I will dig out the case precedence so that isn't Mr McKenzie saying this. It's on the balance of what I have or haven't seen as a criminal investigator in the bundle as a fire expert and also what I've seen coming through the courts in case law. I make the point that this isn't a court of law. We're not apportioning a liability or a blame on anyone but we are taking evidence from people and taking an assertion and summarising that evidence and what I'm getting at is if there are specific areas where you feel either evidence is misleading or has been omitted from being produced that is relevant to the committee's work. Just to add one very important factor, it's also an opportunity. I'm not saying X, Y and Z as guilty of X, Y and Z. I am suggesting areas of investigation or raising concerns in the public interest over a particular course of action by the respondents. I'm also now going to specifically encourage the respondents for full and appropriate disclosure to this committee or any other investigation. It is in their best interest and they need to think carefully about the advice that they're getting from legal counsel on that matter. Thank you and I'm sure that the convener and the clerks will reflect on that. Can I ask just a wider question in case others have more specific questions? This obviously is quite an unusual scenario. There already had been a fire in a live environment, a building which is clearly serving many purposes. As the deputy convener said, it's a live, active, educational, academic environment, but it's also a building of historic importance and influence in Scotland and a great treasure to us in that respect. That's that fire, but then it was going through a construction period where there's been another incident. As you say, do you think that building should have been treated any differently to any other live construction environment post incendiary incident? If you take another example of a building which had had a fire and was going through reconstruction and would have appropriate fire prevention mechanisms in place, do you think this building should have been treated any differently? Was it treated any differently? If not, why do you think it wasn't treated differently? I think that the fact that there had been such a devastating fire, which the fire report shows how that fire rapidly moved through the building from the basement right to the roof, certainly for me would have set off all sorts of alarm bells about how that building should be treated. You learn lessons from the previous fire, and the report was there about how the fire moved through the building, and that prevention of that happening again should have been the top priority. Obviously, once you're into that, you're starting to regard about other scenarios by which fire might spread through the building. The fact that there was that fire and that report should have increased the attention given to the potential for future fires. Having investigated many types of incident, what we suggest is that we always look at the conduct, errors, actions, emissions or the safety features and protocols, or the case for mitigation of defence before, during and after each event. If we have an event, a base event, we want to learn the lessons and we want to have a more robust response of prevent the next one. The new issues in 2006 through the Bureau of Harbour Report 2008, they were about to put suppression in 2014 or it was already being installed. They've had a major fire, they've had failures in inductions, policy procedures, supervision for 2014 and then we don't see some of the evidence and we've got a failure in 2018, which has yet to be determined. We know the potential causes but we don't know the actual cause. Therefore, we would have thought they would have set up and it's within some of the standards to look at it more strategically and holistically with stakeholder groups, Historic Scotland, Fire and Rescue, Building Standards and Specialist Fire Engineers. I don't even see the appointment of a specialist fire engineer between 2014 and 2018, and it's one of the things that I drive for, plus the integration of fire, security, i.e. site security and arson prevention and resilience, business continuity, emergency planning, what if analysis, contingencies, disaster recovery and crisis media response. Those examples are provided to the committee from the five London hospital fires and I've also provided you an extensive guide from the early 80s, 90s, which is about that thick, on historic building protection and fire safety and contingency planning. So all the information is there but as we recognise as experts it's very hard even for informed professionals because of the fragmentation, what is the right route, what's the each case is different, we've got added dynamics. Ultimately, this was a building of one of the oldest working schools of art and architecture. It's not a very good advertisement to have one but two major destructive fires to a school architecture. So there's a reputational consideration and what we see in the governments, the old APM and DCLG, economics of fire, we have the direct cost and an insurable cost, which accounts for one third, two thirds is incidental cost, reputational damage, goodwill loss, concern, legacy issues, speculation, which accounts for two thirds and most companies don't recover. We've also got statistical influence and the statistic that I quote for the FPA is that 60 per cent of construction fires happens when the building is 90 per cent complete and we've had another instance. I'd like to return to the line of question that Clare Baker had. One of the issues that we've raised with the School of Art was the installation and the lack of completion of the fire suppression system before the 2014 fire. The concerns that I raised with them when they came before us, where they had raised the fact that, or their claim, that the significant delay to the completion of the fire suppression system pre-2014 fire was the discovery of asbestos in the building. Mr McKenzie has already commented on that. What I raised with them was that there was a far larger delay caused by the fact that they chose to fund raise for their fire suppression system while spending existing funds in other areas. I wonder if you have a view on the level priority that the School of Art indicated that they placed on fire safety. How common is it for an organisation responsible for building of such historic importance to fund raise for fire safety while spending in non-safety? I'll go first. This is probably the crux of the problem. What I want to draw the committee's attention to the requirement for risk-based fire safety legislation was introduced in 1997, so we've got a massive gap from then to 2006. What happened? In between time with the Fire Scotland Act in 2005, we see a flurry activating in 2006, which also coincides with the Scottish funding council requirements to have formal written estate plans in place in 2007 and then updated five-yearly. Then we've got an ambiguous statement from Ms Gray about 2012 fundraising four years after the 2008 Bureau Harper report and six years after the 2006 report saying, finally, we need to raise money, but they've already done all the long lead times on the care building, which is about £50 million. They have other campuses, so I can't argue on the basis of the needed additional redundancy. They only had one site. They had multiple sites and buildings. There's mutual reciprocal aid agreements within Glasgow, the universities and the tank, the now Glasgow college infrastructure. Many of the arguments that I would look at if I was acting for the College of the Architect, the project team, quickly evaporate. Again, it's an area that we can't just do after just a two-week evidence bundle shift. We need to do a more detailed investigation to help us understand what the root cause failures, the compounding failures or the cascade failures were, all the mitigation afforded to all the parties and that's where independent experts come in. We take the site of public safety, public interest and what the evidence shows us. Then the most important thing next is the lessons learned where do we go next and the recommendations to help augment the committee or the legislative or guidance changes. Can I comment on that a bit on the principle of incremental improvement? I think, from me reading the documents, it seemed that it was all or nothing. In other words, they had to get, you know, they ruled out everything else and everything went on the mis-suppression and then it was a large, complete, complex system, if you like, which was expensive and took wider to, you know, regular only to put in. But the principle of incremental improvement, I think, is a very important one, especially in dealing with historic buildings. And it's that sort of thing of don't let, you know, perfection get in the way of doing good and that starting to make small improvements in terms of compartmentation or fire stopping, even if you can't do the whole thing at once, if you can do it in a phased way over a period of time. At least you're improving the situation as you go. And that doesn't, didn't seem to be considered. And it's one of these sort of messy, awkward things because you're doing little bits here and little bits there, but over time you're, you know, fairly quickly improving the fire safety of a building. And it's a approach which works, I find, with historic buildings, not much. You're not going in and missing it, doing massive disruption, but you're slowly improving the fire resilience of a building. But it's not terribly sexy, it's not terribly interesting, it's not a big project, it'd be difficult if one raised four, but it is an approach which makes buildings safer with how gloss of a historic fabric and that did not seem to have been considered as part of the thing. So I would, let's go back to this question as to why total faith was put in the misoppression and then it took so long to come in and that left a gap in protection. Is it common for organisations of roughly this size responsible for buildings of this level of importance to fund raise for safety critical systems? It's not something that I would have normally seen or heard of. The expectations, the expectation would be it comes out of the Scottish Funding Council base, repair and maintenance works, the capital investment works, any legislative changes following the 1998-95 Disability Discrimination Act or the 2010 provisions. We look at it and see that we need to upgrade, so it comes out of the public purse plus augmented through student fees, consultancy fees and other means of generation and through sponsors and stakeholders in the building. So I think that some of the position statements require clarity. Just for the record, Mr Mackenzie, you said £50 million for the care building. Take it, you mean the read building. Sorry, I'll... It was just for the record. No, thank you. Thanks very much. Thanks for your correction. Thank you, Annabelle Ewing. Thank you, good morning, gentlemen. Yes, I'm just picking up on a few issues concerning the period of time where we saw after the first catastrophic fire and then we saw care come into the... the situation in 2016. So a first question, really, and I know that you've already referred to some aspects of this. You know, the position with regard to care then becoming kind of de facto controller of the property in terms of the site that it represented at that point. And the tender process in terms of the relevant conditions to be fulfilled with regard to fire safety in particular, the contract that was subsequently awarded, the arrangements for oversight on the part of the GSA, which remained the owner if not in de facto possession at that time. Remain the owner with responsibilities as owner and particularly to the nation and the world as regards the nature of the building concerned. So do you have any further comments from a fire safety point of view on that arrangement that was put in place to the extent that you have been able to ascertain exactly what the provisions were? What we can do is confirm the statute position. There's been a number of statements that they hand the control off the site to the contractor. It's not completely and entirely controlled because as you've alluded they remain the owner of the building. They are employing by contract the contractor to act as their competent person and give beneficial control off the site but there has been instances where the client can also have beneficial access under supervision. What there is a statute requirement under construction design and management regulations to address these issues is the identification of the client, is the ultimate client, they're the ultimate responsible person, then they appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor as responsible competent persons to act on the technical detail. But the client must ensure that they have adequate, on-going means to check and inspect and manage those parties. They can't just hand over the site and walk away. They must have that hence the joint fire code that's alluded to, which is applicable to projects over £2.5 million. It's a condition of contract or an insurance requirement under that threshold for high risk or unusual work. Therefore there's a number of checks and balances within the regime that requires the school to on-going and effectively manage. We have seen an instance of the reduction of the use of additional clerker works or the construction inspector at the contract administrator forming that role and what we start to recommend now is the use of a professional fire engineer or fire safety professional to act on the client's part to advise them on statutory enforcement and compliance and then do all the inspections and testings and regime checks and balances on site and do all the audits. So if we have a case where something's happened, the client is safe in their knowledge that they have done everything in their power and I think some of the statements suggest we don't have a good handle on what level of application was done across the parties. Sorry, just to pick up on one point and then come in to Mr Stilford. You said that you would recommend that there be a specialist fire engineer. Is that kind of, although it seems that it's a recommendation and it's not a statutory requirement unless I'm misunderstanding, would that be expected to be normal practice within the context of these situations? Would that be normal that in a building of this size with the issues involved and the risks and all the rest of it, that would have been a normal expectation in amongst all this oversight and structure and all the rest of it that there would have been a specialist fire engineer? There's a grey area. We recognise that principals and academics don't have the knowledge of fire safety. So we have provision in the Fire Scotland Act for identification of an ultimate responsible person and then appointment of a competent person and the provision of adequate resources and authority of that person to ensure fire safety. If you don't have that, you're potentially automatically in default of the legislation non-compliant. What we try and encourage, and I must admit I'm a fire engineer and I'm a consultant at times, that we are seeing the instance because of the complexity of historic buildings, technologies, fire engineering solutions and contemporary engineering knowledge that is beneficial if your in-house fire safety manager or nominated competent fire designate doesn't have the skill on a complex project. A point of fire engineer on the client side to give oversight, look at everything, make sure everything and give the clients options where we have a technical or physical challenge. I don't see that. I do hope that it was there. So there is a mix between statutory requirement, insurance requirements and an ethical requirement. We did ask to see a copy of the insurance policy and we had understood that that would be forthcoming but then we were subsequently told that it wouldn't be forthcoming so we're a wee bit in the dark about what particular conditions may have been imposed by the insurance company. Sorry, Mr Sturff, I was going to make the point again about what we haven't seen and obviously I think it did offer to the committee on the basis that would remain confidential or something, the construction stage fire risk assessment. The fire plan during construction phase, we have not seen the insurance policy. The point I was making is that I think there was evidence given that the care had been required to protect the asset of the building but what we haven't seen is the particular fire risk plan during the construction stage. As we said before, it's not statutory to provide that extra level of protection of the historic asset. It would have to be something come from the client side to make it a requirement. I think the client did say that they did build it into the requirements but we haven't seen the measures in their fire risk plan, construction stage fire risk plan, which give any extra protection into it. That's the bit where, to me, it's lacking as it's what happened in terms of protection of the heritage asset during the site construction. Thank you for that. Moving on just to one other related question. During the course of our meeting with Glasgow School of Art some weeks ago now, we tried to explore what was happening on the site post-care being appointed in terms of reports of a number of activities. It seems that there had been a number of people on the site not directly related to the construction work. There had been, apparently, lectures. There had been what Glasgow School of Art termed, I quote, occasional events. We understand because we saw a picture in social media that there was some sort of big choir event, for example, a whole host of people singing with hard hats on on the building site. I just wonder from your perspective from far safety and that this was a construction site. Is this kind of normal? Also one other thing, for a part of the time anyway, GSA had a base on the site. Partly some facilities and it included inter alia and microwave. Would that be something that you would expect to see in the circumstances of this complex? I think I've got direct knowledge of the lighthouse project, which is a comparator. Because of the international recognition, it was a short-duration project. There were funding challenges. There were a number of visitors and sponsors to the site and other activities. That's perfectly acceptable under beneficial occupation under the provisions of the contractors, insurers, construction phase of health and safety and construction design and management plans. So there's a degree of collaboration and cooperation on that. We don't expect to see something that is obviously not appropriate and may put persons in danger of injury or death. But I can't comment further on that. We can also see that the client has given a portion of the building for practical reasons for a site-based project office with welfare provisions, including microwaves and such like. It might be shy away from the toasters and some other hot work items to reduce the risk. A microwaves legitimate is actually a lower risk than a gas ring cooker or electrical cooker. So it's appropriate and plus under the health and safety work act, health and welfare regulations is an adequate provision. I think there just needs to be a little bit more clarity from the project team and the nature extent activities. We can't actually shut site down for what we have in a new build. It's a traditional topping out ceremony. It's a marking off the last piece of steel going in and we will have a celebration. But we will have robust security and site boundaries so that no one can inadvertently be injured or wander off or enter into a prohibited area. So it is ultimately permissible, allowable, as long as the safe systems operation works, collaboration agreement is there and no person, whether actual realised or in anticipation of, is exposed to an injury, a health disease or potentially fatality exposure. And that's the key. That's the driver. Keep everybody safe, but we can have a degree of latitude even on a live construction site. So is it a building with a construction site or a construction site in a building? We'll look at the project risk. Thank you. Sorry. First of all, the principle is the contractor is in control of the site, so therefore there should have been no activities happening and nobody in without the contractor's permission. And he should only be giving that permission if he can provide a safe environment and if he's satisfied that there's no risk to the workshop of the building as a result of that. So the onus remains with the contractor in those cases. It is quite normal to invite people in during, especially in heritage buildings. I regularly would do hard hat tours and things and that's partly about explaining the story building restoration process to the public and to funders and to owners and people coming in. So there's nothing abnormal about bringing people in as such, but the control of it and the management of it is important and obviously rely, but the responsibility is with the contractor as the person in possession of the site. I'm going to allow the evidence session to go slightly over, but again I would emphasise if questions and answers could be as succinct as possible. Alexander Stewart. Thank you. Following on from Ms Ewing's questions, you talk about the tendering process. In your view, was it robust enough when that tendering process was being processed and the contracts and the oversight of that was put in place? Do you believe that there were any flaws within that tendering process? I'm going to respond very quickly. I've not sufficient time to delve into that factor and we've insufficient information to draw reasonable conclusions. We've asked for more time and more disclosure. We don't have everything. Client requirements, tender process, due diligence, contractor assessments, contractor award criteria. There's an awful lot of, I would say, gaps in standardised cos of practice or construction or client or insurance requirements on this project, which we possibly could clarify very easily with the disclosure, the direction. It might be in favour of the project parties that they were trying to minimise the submission to the absolute nub of the matters, but we might feel as if we need to expand that slightly. By them not being free with that information, by them not being open with that information, it then leads you to suspect and lead you to believe that there may have been flaws within the process, because if they were completely upfront and honest about what was going on and what was to take place, then there would be no comments raised or no fears within that process. With them doing the actions that they do, it leads us to believe that there could well be something inadequate within the process that may well, if had been processed, not created the situation. That's why I recommend to clients and legal councillor now quite robustly and forcibly. The days of trying to minimise exposure or self-implication are gone. Openness and transparency are the way ahead and you take the lead from the investigating authorities and the prosecution council, so Police Scotland, Far Scotland and Procurate Fiscal, they are your lead on guide. Then you would be able to make a statement from the advice that you have received and writing from them. If we don't have that, then it opens up to the speculation which the parties find objectionable. I prefer to call it hypothesis for testing. We investigate, as far as engineers and experts want, as we start drafting out areas for errors, missions, misleading or conceited concealment. I'm not suggesting that in this case. I'm going to trust that it is an oversight or in the brevity of the load on the committee. They have given you the high-level documents that we are now suggesting that we need a full schedule, audit and transparency. If they don't do that, then the speculation will remain. As I say, without having that confidence and oversight, the speculation will continue as you rightly identify. That creates a cloud over the whole process as to how competent and how the whole thing was managed effectively. If we are not prepared to show that, then the speculation, as I say, will continue to be the function going forward. Kenneth Gibson. Good morning, gentlemen. In evidence, the committee Muriel Gray said, and I quote, We took every possible step above and beyond the standard in specifying contract terms, including fire precautions for the Macintosh building restoration project. Is that something you would agree with? I think that there's a statutory requirement to consider all risks at source to remove, replace, reduce, mitigate and then transfer the non-statuary duties to insurance. The residual risk, we can't do anything with, and there always is, the unforeseen. What they have said is that we complied with all legislation, but I have not demonstrated how, because there are an infinite number of routes to comply and what piece of legislation are they referring to. Hear from safety, building standards, fire safety, civil continuancies, disability discrimination, any number of things. Then, how is that reflected in client requirements or contractual requirements or insurance requirements, which then filter down to the design team, which acts upon it, and then the construction team. I've worked on all sides of the construction sector, and one of the common complaints from contractors is that they essentially follow the instruction and requirements of the client. But the good ones will make recommendations and robust recommendations where they feel the client is opening themselves up to exposure, or there are alternative ways to achieve something in a cheaper or safer manner. I dislike the term value engineering, it's all too often applied wrongly these days. What we've seen in this project is that there's a number of statements and a number of things, but there is no substantiation or evidence underneath it, which is leading to some of the public concerns, some of the areas for further investigation or some of the speculation within the media and within the public. That's where if we look at a crisis response under a resilience or emergency planning response or disaster recovery response, transparency is good, effective communication, more is less, so if you provide it all you will less speculation or errors or questions about your transparency. If you hide behind PR statements or the term we can't comment or provide under an active ongoing investigation, it's not always the case because I will work with someone as an independent expert or as the criminal investigator in the public interest, and I know I will dictate what can and can't be disclosed to the parties. So there is another thing there that we need to look at. One of the reports that have provided the clerks in advance of today's meeting was the report from the five London hospital fires because they went in great lengths to look at what were the failures, what were the compounding, what were the cascades, what were the hospitals and executive's response, what they could have done better. One of the recurrent themes was crisis communications, and I think following both fires it was quite weak on a number of levels which led to the need of this committee and my call for a public inquiry just to get that clarification, just to give everybody an option, but that's under the auspice and recommendation of this committee. I think if and as always in this circumstance is a very big if, if the building had been finished, it would have had good fire protection measures built into both compartmentation and fire suppression. The tragedy of course is that it didn't get finished and therefore I think the gap in the client's requirements, the scientific requirements and the contractor's requirements was in terms of protecting the asset during the construction period. We have the evidence in previous fire but it's also of all the historic fires that take place during construction to know that the highest risk for historic building is actually during the construction period. That's the bit I would suggest is the gap in both the provision and it was lack of attention to the protection of the heritage asset from fire during the construction period. OK, so not above and beyond then. In today's times a GSA spokeswoman said and I quote, as regards having a working mis-suppression system at the time of the fire, there is no such system that could have been operation on the Mac prior to the completion of the building phase. Is that something you would... I reject that statement in its entirety. OK, thanks. I'm sorry, we try and be direct at times. Good. I appreciate that. It's actually a long answer previously. There are temporary fire suppression systems which are available on the market to prevent. And phased installation. The building was designed and constructed in two phases. It's got three main areas, the east wing, the west wing and the central gore. We can also subdivide the phased installation by floor. We can walk top down, bottom up and we can build in order with infrastructure. That's why the construction phase, fire safety plan, the risk assessments, the method statements, the continuancies and the construction programme are absolutely important to the evidence because I could have seen the critical path then. And I can't show many cases because I'm not just a fire engineer. And just one final point. The decision was made between April and August 2016 to replace the near complete high pressure mis-system with a low pressure mis-system. Why would you replace a high pressure system with a low pressure system? What would be the benefit of that? Without seeing the potentials of the design, I can't comment. Again, you mean to know the design rationale behind it. It could be as simple as different supplier, different manufacturer, somebody asking somebody to stand over a system with somebody else to put in. There's all sorts of things that could have come into it. I would suggest, as clarity on, was it as a result of the base design specification and then the more detailed and matured, specialist contractor design portion. So you have the headline design, specification tender, then a contractor for life safety systems will appoint a specialist subcontractor who will then finish off the detailed design which is going to be installed, tested, commissioned and signed. There's a number of certificates going through there. There's also evolution of the British and international standards as well. So there might have been a step changer, there might have been a technology change. It's just as a lay person, you automatically assume a high pressure system would be more effective than a low pressure system. Bring in different risks. Just to wind up and if you could be as brief as possible, I just want to nail this issue about the choice of a complex misuppression system after 2008 instead of the tried and tested sprinkler system. In evidence we were told two reasons why that wasn't done, one that they wouldn't get permission for it and one that there wasn't enough water in Garnett Hill to run a sprinkler system. What's your views on those two responses? Well, I speak from a conservation architect's viewpoint to start with and to me there is no doubt that a mis suppression system is better for a start building fabric just in terms of the sheer amount of water that would be put into a building. So from the evidence that I have I would support that decision to go for a mis suppression or in certain areas there's no people in a gas suppression system as opposed to the traditional flood of water. So I would support that. My criticism is more that too much emphasis was put on that alone as the answer to the fire safety issues rather than a combination of that and more importantly in my mind compartmentation. I'm not aware of any reasons why it wouldn't be permissible, it's a recognised system, in fact it's a system we are leaning towards in historic buildings because they use less water, there is less kit, there is less damage. I want to correct one of the statements by GSE who said, maybe under the pressures of the present committee, that the water damage is more destructive actually. We can recover from water damage especially historic archives and contents but we can't recover from a catastrophic fire. We can do it at times but it's very cost prohibitive. The other question about the water pressure and supplies, there is increasing knowledge that we can't always guarantee water supplies especially if it's a simultaneous fire or a water main burst. So as a contingency the water authorities and providers try and provide minimum pressure and floor requirements for the fire service so they'll re-diver everything into the fire mains for that civil contingency but they're encouraging persons installing within the building to have their own redundant and resilient tank supplies. Again, the water mist system is pressurising and atomising the water so we need less, therefore the tanks in the kit are smaller and the pipe war is smaller. So in my mind, to summarise, it shouldn't have taken from 2006 to 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018. Let's get on with the job and protect the building. Finally, two former directors of the art school have suggested that the pressures of running a major educational institution are not compatible with a rebuild of this scale and complexity and that if the art school is to be rebuilt it should be taken out of the hands of the board. Do you have a view on that? I think from a far engineer's perspective we recognise in the British Starrers BS 9999 the need for stakeholder consultation. I think there's a need for stakeholder consultation on what happens next in the building. Personally I'd like to see it rebuild and if we look at the case issue I'm going to provide you on the Windsor Castle reclamation and refurbishment. Does any number of pictures will show night and day who is responsible and control over that works in the technical competency or capacity is to be determined but I would lean towards to designated responsible person suggesting that the college and its board of Governors or operational executive doesn't have the capacity that might lead to a decision or recommendation by the committee. I think I would agree with that but it's not so much about the headline institution which is in charge. It's the people who are tasked to be experienced, competent and knowledgeable to do the work so I don't think there's a case as such for taking your way from the Glasgow School of Art. It's more what happens below that in terms of the people tasked with the proper running of the job. The experience I'm more familiar with is in the university here in the estates team. The people who are running the building as the operations are not the people who are directing the refurbishments and the restoration. There's a professional estates team to be doing that and they do it very well. I've worked for some of the major support services partnerships in NHS and some of the framework providers as well, the big top tier companies. If GSA and many clients don't have direct labour or technical teams anymore you can be part of a reciprocal support service which is commonly used in higher education across different universities or you can have a framework agreement or you can contract in agency project managers or you can commission a project management contractor to manage the contract and we can have a project management contract, a design and bill contract or traditional contract. Some of the statements have validity but they also can be rejected partially because there are other mechanisms and the market dynamics have driven those so it's a bit of a strange position statement. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence today. We'll briefly suspend to change over our panels of witnesses. Thanks very much. I'd like to welcome our second panel. We are joined by officials from Historic Environment Scotland and I'd like to welcome Barbara Cummins, director of heritage, Dara Parsons, deputy head of casework and Thomas Knowles, the head of grants. I apologise to our witnesses for keeping them a little bit later. Our last evidence session ran a little bit over so I apologise for that. Just as an opening question, you'll have seen the submissions from Glasgow School of Art and in those submissions they talk about the 2006 work that was done in terms of fire assessment. The building was assessed as requiring fire upgrades. They said that you were involved at that stage in advising them. Can you tell us a little bit about your role in those discussions and why more of a priority was not put on installing fire prevention methods in a timely way? Because we know that it took until 2014 before any fire suppression system was put in and no compartmentalisation was done at all in that time. Thank you for the committee inviting us to provide answers. We are involved with building owners across Scotland in providing advice on the management of their buildings. In particular, there is a significant one like the Glasgow School of Art that is quite closely involved with them and with the local authority who are ultimately responsible for deciding if consents are required and whether to grant consents or not. We act in an advisory capacity on that basis. We do not tell people what to do. When it comes to things like fire measures, there will be experts, and you've heard from experts earlier this morning, who will be advising on what's the appropriate mechanism. We will give advice for our interests in the historic environment about the impact that that might have on the fabric of a building, for example, and whether or not the intervention is appropriate. I have to say that we were discussing this before the committee started. We can't think of an instance where we have said that a suppression system or compartmentation or other measures that are appropriate for fire safety should not be allowed in a historic building. We can't think of an instance where we have advised against that, but we can't compel someone to do something in a timely manner either. We were part of the discussions about what was appropriate, but we were giving advice purely for our historic environment interests, not about the speed of delivery. If, as a result of the 2008 report, the art school had decided to go for a sprinkler system, which was easier and quicker to install, you wouldn't necessarily have said no, because we've heard evidence that the sprinkler systems are in other historic buildings. Indeed. We would look at what that required in terms of physical interventions and whether those physical interventions were appropriate. Your role in consensus is very much about making sure that things are preserved as they should be in terms of historical and artistic integrity being maintained. You have given a lot of money to Glasgow School of Art over the years in terms of upgrading it. Given the context of two fires in one of our most precious buildings, people would perhaps question why your role was reserved to those aspects of conservation, because if two fires destroy a precious asset, then there's nothing left to conserve. Perhaps your role should have been a little bit more proactive about making sure that we had put forward protection measures to stop the destruction of such a precious asset. I see why you might say that, but there are lots of new understandings, regulations that govern how we conduct our lives and manage our buildings. Those regulations all post-date and our understanding all post-dates the construction of those buildings. There are currently, as of a couple of days ago, 46,916 listed buildings in Scotland. You cannot apply the regulations retrospectively and proactively to all of those buildings. We have to be careful that we're not apportioning a degree of blame about people not being up-to-date with current technology, current ways of thinking and current building management practices. We encourage good practice and we do that through the guidance and advice that we provide. We have a guidance note on fire protection in traditional buildings and we have managing change guidance on that. We certainly advocate that for owners, but you can't retrospectively apply what you would now expect of a brand new building. When occupants change or when new developments occur, then we would expect people to try and bring those buildings up to the modern standards. You were involved in, after 2008, according to Glasgow School of Art themselves, you attended workshops. You were quite intimately involved in their planning for the future of the building. Surely, at that point, you should have installed a sense of urgency in terms of both compartmentation and a fire suppression system? There isn't anything that we can do that requires somebody to implement measures or consents within any particular time frame. That's not the remit that we have. I'm not sure how that would be enforceable in any event. We have no enforcement powers. We have no decision making powers. We can purely provide advice. Part of the discussions that were happening pre the first fire in between was about the fire suppression measures, but not about the timescales to deliver that. We wouldn't be in a position to require that of any owner. You can require that they use a certain type of wood in the restoration, for example? No. We can respond to what they're choosing to do, and we can give advice on what we know of the construction of the original building and what would be an appropriate alternative, but we can't require anyone to do anything. The decisions that are taken about physical alterations are taken by the local authority, the planning authority. Do you think that your role should be changed then? We have lost. It's an international embarrassment. We've lost to one of the greatest pieces of art ever produced. We were custodians of it, and we've lost it. Do you think in the context of that international embarrassment that perhaps your role should change? I don't think that the historic environment should be responsible for preventing disastrous fires across the historic environment. We can respond to the causes of this fire, as we did to the previous one in updating our guidance from the lessons learned in that. I don't understand what powers we could be given to deal with this in the future, given that the regulations are from construction regulations and building regulations around fire. We will give advice on that, and we are involved in advising on the building regulations as they impact on the historic environment to ensure that that is taken account of. You say that you updated your guidance after the first fire. Clearly, there was a second fire. Is that because the guidance wasn't followed, or what's your view on the evidence that's been taken so far? Were lessons not learned, or should there be changes in regulations? I can't comment on that until we understand the actual cause of the fire. There will undoubtedly be lessons to be learned, and certainly the issue of fire during construction is something that we will bring into guidance in the future around practice. This morning, you said that it's not your role to compel or to make requirements on those who are custodians of historic buildings. As experts in the field, who do you think should be compelling and who should be? You mentioned local authorities, but do you have any concerns that local authorities' remit is? Are their knowledge too narrow to deal with a building as unique as McIntosh and other similar buildings in Scotland? Who do you think should be taking a lead on compeling and making requirements on how organisations protect buildings of that significance? There are a variety of regimes that wonder which that happens. We are all involved in supporting the Scottish Government in drafting legislation and regulations. A range of experts will input to that, so building regulations will control what's appropriate. Although they are managed by building standards officers in local authorities, they are fed into by experts from all over the country when they are drafted and subject to full consultation. I don't think that it is any one individual who is responsible for ensuring that those are fit for purpose. The overall system that you have described is robust enough to deal with buildings similar to McIntosh and provides enough protections in there and makes it clear what the responsibility of the owners is in terms of protecting that building. We heard evidence from the previous panel and earlier panels about the predominance of the need to protect life when it comes to fire protection. The fabric of the building is a secondary concern. We have heard some evidence that whether that is appropriate in a building of that significance and whether that is sufficient in a building of that significance. There needs to be changes to that. This morning, Mr Mackenzie talked about a more partnership approach that you could make clear the importance of the fabric of the building. Do you have any views on how that operates at the moment? I suppose that the fire safety regulations have come from the need to protect life and that's where they've been drawn from. Increasingly there's an understanding with the historic environment and with collections associated with buildings such as museums that there's the need to protect those as assets in their own right. I'm not sure where the compulsion would exist to change the focus so that it's also about protecting the building because I suspect, although I'm speculating here, that when it comes to the fire service their primary concern will always be in protecting life and if that means letting an important building go because there's a fire happening in it then possibly so be it at the time because that decision will be taken on the ground by the fire service at the time. The final question is, prior to the 2014 fire, the fire was started by an individual student who was not following the rules under how they were meant to be operating. There have been questions asked about the type of work that students were undertaken in that building and whether it was appropriate for a building of that nature. Do you have any views on the way in which the art college was operational for students in the type of work that was taking place in the building and whether that was appropriate to happen in that historic building? I can only speak for what we do in our own estate and we try and control works in historic buildings so hot works for example and we try and limit that as much as possible so it would be responsible for an owner to ensure that they limited works that had the potential to cause risks. Annabelle Ewing, I thank you for coming to the committee. You may be aware that some comment has been made about what we could call the duality of purpose vis-a-vis the Macintosh building in the sense that, whilst it is a functioning educational building, an absolute jewel in the crown so to say, of the public estate if you like in that sense of Scotland and indeed the cultural asset of the world in terms of its importance architecturally and otherwise. For the GSA as the organisation rather in charge of both the building and running the art school that this may lead to certain issues. Some have suggested that the Macintosh building of the future be handed over to a trust and I just wondered from historic environment Scotland perspective has there been any consideration over the piece about whether actually higher education institutions have the necessary expertise to actually manage category A listed buildings of national significance like the Macintosh building represents. Is that something that historic environment Scotland has actually reflected upon further to your remit? In short no but as a slightly longer answer as I said earlier there are over 45,000 listed buildings in Scotland all generally the responsibility of the owners and those are private individuals from individual householders to institutions the NHS occupies historic buildings as well. I think be a very dangerous road to go down to say that an owner can't or can't access the expertise necessary to look after their building. In the sense that it's not just any old historic building it was an absolute as I said Joan the Crown and I just wondered then does historic environment Scotland have no role at all in considering the suitability of owners of category A listed buildings. There's no role at all in that process none whatsoever so the listing will be made and whoever is the order is absolutely nothing to do with your consideration whether they have any suitability or entire suitability would not be a consideration for historic environment Scotland. When we designate a listed building we're looking at the merits of the building not the nature of the owner. Last question for me quickly. If we look to the Macintosh building and the GSA there have been two catastrophic fires in a short space of time and in very much the recent past. So does historic environment Scotland have any view on whether actually going forward it should be the GSA that should retain control of the Macintosh building as rebuilt or should this be handed over to a trust that some people have suggested. Does HES have a view on that? No, no view. Tavish Scott. Can I start by just asking when you provide grant assistance as you do you obviously lay conditions on that grant assistance don't you and would any of those normal grants particularly in a big and important historic building include issues relating to fire suppression fire avoidance fire whatever you want to call it. It mostly would be around ensuring that there is insurance in place for the period of time during construction and then post we monitor those conditions for up to 10 years after the grant has been made. But you can or have in the past taken into account the risk of fire and but you do that through the insurance policy. We take that, yes. We do that through the insurance policy. And in the case of Glasgow in case of the building we're discussing today when you consider when you consider your grant conditions for giving them new new monies new public monies in relation to the rebuild. Was that given any thought the importance of ensuring fire? Absolutely and it was part of the discussion that was taking place at the time as we've already discussed with colleagues Historic Environment Scotland predecessor Historic Scotland at the time was involved in those conversations. Okay and what did you conclude at the time? We concluded that fire suppression systems were a part of the wider project to which we were funding elements of and therefore it was contingent on that taking place and contingent on insurance taking place in case of any disaster. That happened in the meantime. Thank you and therefore was Historic Scotland at the time involved in the decision and we're not clear yet who took that decision as to why to rip out the system that was in place in 2014. Were you involved in that? Was the organisation? From a grant side of point of view we weren't involved in that. No, not the grant but the rest of the organisation? I'm not aware of being asked about that. Why not? You'd have to ask the School of Fire why they didn't ask us to talk about it. Sorry, it may not have been new personally but did Historic Scotland ask those questions at the time? Were you made aware of the situation? No, it wasn't something that was specifically raised. Historic Scotland did not know there was a fire suppression system in place in 2014 that was 95% complete? We did know that. You did know that? Yes. I'm sorry these are probably very unfair questions because it probably wasn't new personally but did the organisation not ask after the 2014 fire what happened to that system? Lessons learned? All the things you were saying to my colleagues earlier on? We may well have asked about the status of its installation at that point because as I understand it it was largely there but hadn't been commissioned, which was obviously an issue. We wouldn't have asked are you keeping it? I don't think it would have occurred to us. That seems the obvious question for everyone to have asked. Maybe with hindsight but not at the time it wouldn't have occurred to us that it was an issue at that point in time because we would have been focused on what are you going to do to recover from that first fire. But it did not just intuitively felt to ask there was a system in place, it was just about complete, it survived the fire as we understand largely intact. It would have been quite a good question to have asked why aren't you keeping it in place as you move forward with the rebuild? I may well have been. We're here now and we didn't ask that question at the time. Just to clarify your role, there were various committees and so on set up to supervise the rebuild after 2014. I don't have the facts right in front of me at the moment but my recollection is that you had some kind of formal involvement in one of those committees. What was it? We have a member of staff who goes along to provide our advice in relation to that. So that's where you were part of the project management team or what was it? No, not part of the project management team. This is an advisory capacity that we have. So we're not involved in making decisions. No but it's just in terms of Tavish Scott's question. My recollection was that you did have some formal role in some committee. What was it? We had a member of staff who sat in the Macintosh Restoration Committee long ago in 2014. To advise on the conservation aspects of the restoration. Thank you very much. Sandra White. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning. I could continue on this theme just to clarify for myself. Since 1995 up until 2012, Historic Environment Scotland has given £1,226,844 to the School of Art. It's all basically been repair work. We now understand that there are conditions put on in regards to insurance, et cetera, et cetera. To move on from that, you did mention it, possibly not yourselves, but you did have a so-called expert representative there. We heard earlier on that it would have been advisable to have a special fire officer appointed at this point. That isn't within your remit to suggest that, is that correct? At that point, we then go on to say that you also attended a meeting, a member of staff attended a meeting of the restoration committee again. To advise on details and to ensure that the substantial public investment was appropriately directed. What advice did you give within your remit, in that respect, at the public money that was given? What advice did you give at this restoration committee? Our advice purely would be on the conservation interventions and some of the decisions around what the physical interventions would mean for the special interest of the building, some of the decisions around restoration approaches to particular parts of the building. I don't know, Dara, if you've got particular examples of things where you think we might have provided specific advice that would be helpful. Approaches to materials where materials are sought, what would be appropriate, what was accurate in terms of restoration, what was in the spirit of the building. Really, it's conservation practice, philosophy, specific decisions about physical intervention. Sorry to interrupt you, but similar to a number of the people who worked on the art school who came along voluntarily to help restore, similar to that. What I'm trying to get at, and I'm not getting it yourselves, but I just want to know exactly what your remit is. You couldn't advise on a special fire officer to be there, even though the grants were conditional on the insurance covering fire. You couldn't advise on a sprinkler system, even though you give all this money to the school of art and other historic buildings. You mentioned earlier on to the convener that all you could really advise on is the type of wood that was used. You're giving grants to the Glasgow School of Art. You have no remit or locus to protect any of the monies that's been put in. At the end of the day, the school of art is the people who dictate how this money is going to be spent. Is that correct? I'll take that. Thank you for that question. We dictate the quality of work that takes place with grant-aided interventions through the grants. Effectively, by offering a grant to the Glasgow School of Art, we work in conjunction with the conservation architect internally and externally. The Glasgow School of Arts professional advisers and our own internal ones to define what the best intervention and most suitable intervention is, and that is what we're funding. Surely the best and most suitable intervention would have been to make sure that the fire sprinkler system, which you didn't know was there, you didn't know it was taken out. Surely that would be part of the knowledge you should be seeking to protect the building as well. You didn't ask these questions. I think we're conflating two fires now. It doesn't matter how many. Two fires, one was bad, but two was criminal. We're talking about two fires. Sorry to be so abrupt in this particular point. From 2006 onwards, which is when the Glasgow School of Art first approached us for this secondary project, Can you let Mr Noll answer the question? We worked with the Glasgow School of Art on a wide-ranging repair programme, which was funded by multiple funders and was much more wide-reaching than just Historic Scotland at the time was able to fund because we've got grant-eligible criteria. We can only fund repair work. We can't fund new interventions. Our oversight of the whole project was satisfied because systems were being put in place such as a far suppressant system, which was part of the wider project and insurance. We were unable to fund those elements because they were new interventions, however other funders were. So, when you take the whole package, we were satisfied that at the end of the project there would be a safe and secure building. We are unfortunately in a position where we never got to that point. I think this is a really important point. For me anyway, I'm sorry, but you mentioned that it was conditional on insurance and the fire sprinkler system. Does that harm the insurance that the fire sprinkler system was actually taken out? I didn't know that the fire... What did you know? So, as far as I'm aware, my intervention into this case came to an end effectively after the first fire because at that point it got handed over to the insurance company who were then offsetting... Because effectively everything that was funded went up in smoke at that first fire. I think that it's already been made very clear that the historical environment Scotland had no comment to make when they ripped out the fire suppression system in the answer to questions by Tavish Scott. That's what you said, you didn't comment on it. I wasn't aware that we were aware of that. We'll move on, Ross Greer. My question's actually just been directly answered by Mr Rose, so for the sake of time I'm happy to move on. Kenneth Gibson. Thank you, convener. You said your job is to look at the merits of the building, and I quote, not to prevent disastrous fires. I don't want to go into questions that have already been asked, but I'm just wondering in terms of going forward where we are, I'm just wondering what conditions you might apply to future grants if indeed the Markintosh is rebuilt. We have our standard conditions of grant, which predominantly are around the quality of work and the standards of professional advisers that are involved in those projects. Absolutely, we will be looking at lessons to be learnt from the findings of this committee and seeing if there's anything else that we can be putting in excess of what we already do around looking at the project as a whole, looking at what the end state of that project is going to look like, looking at the sustainability of the organisations who operate the end product. And indeed, insurance during the construction phase, as well as post, and then actually also the ongoing maintenance of the granted building once the project is being completed as well. Now, in relation to fire safety? Yes. And just one other point, I'm just wondering what kind of level of financial support would a historic environment in Scotland consider for a new build? I mean, I know that's a kind of 64,000 tall question, I'm sure the Glasgow High School would expect more than 64,000 dollars. It's actually very easy for me to answer, I have no locus for a new build. The grants that we have are specifically for the repair and conservation of existing historic fabric, though those are the elements that we would... Indeed, but the lady who does that, I would imagine, although it hasn't been considered as yet, probably a varied look, almost identical or as much as possible towards that, towards what the old Macintosh looked like. So, in that regard, would a historic environment in Scotland be willing to consider it as it would consider an existing old building, given that it's likely to be a replica, I would suspect? Or the fact that it is, would you kind of not be involved at all in that? And therefore, it wouldn't be involved in a new build, so that it's not to worry about ensuring that you would look to ensure maximum safety, to secure your investment, etc. Don't really apply because you don't believe you'll be involved in any future development of the building. Not likely to be involved in future applications for grant. The grant money, as it were, is vicariously in the hands of the insurer now. We would be involved in the consenting processes that will undoubtedly go through both planning permission and listed building consent for whatever physical recovery will happen on the site. So, we will be involved in giving advice on that and on the appropriate measures, and I would expect that we will be part of the conversation around fire safety measures as part of that. Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks very much. Alexander. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Falling both fires, have Environment Scotland identified any gaps that they see within its statutory duties? Have you found any gaps? Not in relation to our statutory duties, but we always learn lessons from disastrous events. Unfortunately, they happen more frequently than we would like, not always just fire. As I said, we updated our guidance following the first fire. We constantly undertake research into the performance of historic buildings and where necessary that informs our guidance. We try and pass that knowledge on as much as possible, and undoubtedly from this latest fire, once we understand precisely the causes and the outcomes from this committee, we will again review the guidance that we provide and the practice that we undertake on our own estate. And would that practice and guidance deal with materials and equipment being used in any refurbishment or replacement, or even ones that are being managed at present who are just having maintenance done to them? In respect of their combustibility? Yeah, just any guidance that you think would be appropriate to materials that are being used in historic buildings at that time. We do provide technical guidance on the appropriate use of materials, so yes. Earlier, I was talking about the processes that were taking place for the tenders when contracts are given out in earlier evidence sessions. Do you have any role in that whole process at all once the contract and the tenders have been fulfilled and the contractors are on site about what would be involved in any of that process? Not in the contractual arrangements. No, so you would not be involved in any of that? We would be involved from the grant's perspective if our grant money was involved in ensuring the appropriate expertise. And Mr Mills, you talked about expertise or you talked about some of the qualities that would be there. Can you be elaborate on that? Absolutely. So if there's a granted case during the life of the project, of the repair project, Historic Environment Scotland representatives who are normally architects from our architects team will go on site just to make sure of the quality of work that's taking place throughout that process and effectively protecting the public investment and making sure it's going to what has been agreed, so the agreed scheme of repair. And if there were any flaws or if there were any questions about that quality, how would that be managed? So that gets managed back to ourselves as a grants team and we go back to the applicant who is normally the owner of the building and saying that we have found substandard repair works, for example, and they will take that forward with their contractor. We will not be releasing funds for anything which my professional advisors have suggested are substandard. Substandard. Thank you, convener. Okay. Thank you very much. Jamie Greene. Thank you, convener. I know a lot has already been said around grant funding, but can I just ask some specific questions and feel free if this is quick fire, you can answer succinctly. Of the £1.2 million that you've given to the GSA, has any of that money been in relation to fire suppression or fire safety or securing the building in relation to fire risk? Succinctly no. The specific money that we gave was for the repair of the historic fabric that was in existence within the building. So succinctly no, but as part of a wider project where that was specified to take place, we were part of the wider project. I appreciate you were part of a much wider funding mechanism. Funds coming from lots of different places, but in relation to the grants that you gave, nothing in relation to fire. Is that because of the criteria of your grant funding? In other words, would you say that if they did the approach you in asking for money in relation to fire suppression? They did. They specifically asked whether we could fund a new fire suppressant system as part of their discussions as how they would raise money. You heard evidence earlier about having a fund raising for that, and we went back to the legislation, which at the time was under the 1953 Historic Buildings and Ancient Monument Act, which specifically defines that we can only give grants to repair works, and therefore it's not a grant eligible intervention, and they were made aware of that. Specific. How much did they ask you for? They didn't ask for a specific amount. They asked us whether they could count it as grant eligible works. And you said no. And we said no. So what makes you think, then, that given that your remit is around the conservation of that, if I just look at your website, it says Historic Violent Scotland is the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland's historic environment. Which bit of that means that you can say no to requests for money to protect an historic building? Because we're governed by legislation statutes, which defines what we can and can't give money to. So should it change, then, and you of you, given your remit for the record? I mean, it seems bonkers to me that they become to you and say, we need to protect this building. Can you help us with money? If we don't have the money to do it, we can't do it. And you say sorry, we're not allowed to. Computer says no. I think you need to be cautious about unintended consequences. Our remit is to concern when it comes to the grants, the fabric of historic buildings. There are lots of parts of the systems within which we operate that we're not preventing that happening. And we expect things to be a package. We do not give 100% funding to any project. There's always a portion that must come from the owner or from other sources of fundraising. So changing the criteria for our grants still won't solve that problem. There will still need to be funds sought from any owner carrying out any project. But what I'm getting is the rules around making a decision on the criteria based on your interpretation of what you can and can't give money for. There's a very thin line between what is a repair and what is a new intervention. You could argue that all repairs are new interventions because they're replacing something that either doesn't exist or is lost. So I guess who makes that decision as to whether this is a repair, whether it's a new intervention, you could argue that a mis-oppression system or other types of fire suppression system or compartmentalisation as we talked about is a repair over the building after a big fire. So who made that decision? I don't think I would argue that a mis-oppression system is a repair unless it's an agent mis-oppression system that was put in in the 1800s that somebody is repairing. But I see your point and I can understand why you asked the question. It's not something that's part of our current grant programme and there's a big call on our grants so I would be cautious about saying that this is something that we would want to support. OK, and just as a last wider question, are you confident and comfortable that you have fulfilled your obligations with regards to your remit and preserving and helping the owners of such buildings protect those buildings given there was a catastrophic fire and then a subsequent one? Are you comfortable that your agency has entirely met your public obligations with regards to helping that building maintain its status as a valuable heritage? I can't really respond in response to the second fire because I think there's still a way to go there. In particular understanding the causes of that but certainly in relation to the first one, I would say we went over and above. We were part of supporting the salvage operation and helping at that point in time. There may well be lessons that we will learn as a result of this one that would lead us to believe that we could have done things differently or better. OK, thank you. Did you want to come back in? Tavish Scott? If I may convene to the points that Jamie Greene has been making, you mentioned the restoration committee earlier on and therefore I guess all the organisations who were grant funding the restoration were part of that. I mean I take your answers to Jamie Greene about you were asked to provide money for a fire suppression system and couldn't do it but in that restoration committee didn't you collectively all sit around there and say that's got to be part of it? And therefore someone's got to find the funding. I appreciate you couldn't do it but someone's got to find the funding for it. This predates the restoration committee. This discussion was happening with the School of Art well before the first fire. Yes, but at some stage all the funding organisations you're part of it appreciate that. We're presumably in a room saying right we're all going to assist to rebuild this fantastic asset for Scotland and for the nation. We understand that there was a fire but by then we understood what had happened. Isn't it going to be crucially important that one of us comes up to the plate with the money to make that happen? Did that happen? So well at that point there was no funders money involved because it was all under the insurance because the fire had already happened. So the funders had had the discussion previous to the first fire and absolutely there was a recognition that there needed to be a fire suppression system and someone was funding it. Other funders were funding it. It was a fully funded project when it went on site. After the fire as funders we didn't have a locus anymore because what we had funded had gone up in smoke. Well it hadn't gone up before. Some of it hadn't gone up. 97% of it hadn't gone up in smoke. It was still there. All of mine did. The library went. That was where the predominant amount of our funds were. But as you went into the funding package for the second for the reconstruction. There was no funding package for the reconstruction from us or from most of the other funders. I can't speak on behalf of the other funders but because all of the money that we had put in was then covered for the rebuild by their insurance policy. But there was no discussion therefore amongst you all about how to make sure this didn't happen again. That would have been part of the conversation around the restoration committee work. So that was not about the money at that point. That's about what's necessary and it has been understood as I said from before the first fire that fire suppression and fire safety measures were absolutely essential in this building. That's not a point to be at. So Jamie asked you the question. Jamie Green asked you the question and you were asked to provide funding for fire suppression system for the new build. You said you couldn't. My simple question was obviously too simple. You were therefore all being asked for that. Do you not all get together and agree who was going to do it? We had agreed. So it was funded in the first one. So that was then part of the committee discussion which would have said to the insurance as part of this we were putting in a fire suppression system. We need money to do that. I wasn't on that committee but again I just think we're slightly conflating the two fires. I'm talking about post to 2014 fire. I'm talking about the reconstruction after 2014 which you were asked to grant aid. We were not asked to grant aid at the post 2014 reconstruction. So we were not asked to put any money in. So when Jamie was asking you about 2006 onwards when there was a conversation about 2006? Clarify that because it was Jamie. You were refused the grant in terms of your line of questions Jamie after the 2006 which we know from papers you sat down and workshopped with Glasgow schools. Glasgow school of art and the council and various other people. I think the point is that it took such a long time to install a fire suppression after that conversation happened in 2006 and surely you should have been intervening at that point to say why hasn't it been done sooner? Well the project didn't start so that was very initial conversations about Glasgow school of art coming for funding of this large scale project which didn't go on site until 2008. I don't want to make up a date off the top of my head but I don't have my files with me but they went on site much later and at that point there was a fully funded project. All my time, my most precious asset had been left unprotected when you knew from the whole hackle report that it was unsafe. But they were going out of fundraising for their project. We're going to have to finish up but I just wanted to ask you and thank you for the written evidence that you've provided. We did ask you about the lessons to be learned from the Macintosh fires and you did say that Historic Environment Scotland had issued a new managing change in the Historic Environment guidance note on fire safety management after the 2014 fire. Can you give us more details on what that guidance note advised? That goes through what it's important to consider as part of fire safety. It recognises that there needs to be fire safety measures as part of any scheme so it's quite high level because we have the detailed technical guidance. As I've already said it talks about compartmentation, it talks about sprinkler systems, other suppressant systems, gives examples of where these have happened in other historic buildings. It's merely indicating to people that it's always possible to accommodate change to manage fire safety in a building. That's very deliberately why this week it's called managing change. It's not an expectation that you can't do this because it's a historic building. I take it built on the joint code of practice for fire safety and construction sites. You'll be familiar with that? No, I'm not familiar with that. Those who have input to the guidance will do. Our guidance notes are subject to full public consultation before we issue them. So if we are issuing or saying anything inappropriate we would rectify that on the advice of others. It's just that I've written evidence from Stuart Kidd, the fire safety expert who's also one of your advisers. Just talk about the joint code which he helped draw up. Also your guide for practitioners from 2010 which he says draws on the joint code. That joint code goes well above any fire safety plan and says that fire suppression systems should be put in during construction to preserve precious assets. I'm just surprised you know like we've heard in your responses to Tavish Scott that after that first fire a fire suppression system was ripped out and there was a gap before a new one was put in. That doesn't strike me as being in the spirit of the joint code or indeed your own advice at the time. We know you were on the Macintosh Restoration Committee so I'm just surprised that you didn't come in. Given that joint code and your own technical documentation advising on this that you weren't more proactive in that regard? There's nothing I can say about that. Our role is to provide advice on the conservation interventions where we're not fire experts when it comes to that. You've spent quite a lot of time drawing up very technical and careful advice about virus during construction so clearly you do give advice. But when you were actually involved, intimately involved in a restoration project you were on the restoration committee you didn't seem to insist that that advice was followed. That advice is good practice across a range of things. We're not the experts in it. It was left unprotected and you were a member of the Macintosh Restoration Committee and it was left unprotected. We'll discover that once the fire service has made their report. You talked about the number of listed buildings in Scotland and how it's the responsibility of the owners. I used to live in a listed building, a B listed building and I wouldn't have expected my building to be treated in the same way as the Macintosh School of Art. I'm getting the impression that you're applying. This is what our regulations say and we've got all these buildings. It's almost as though there's parity across them instead of as the organisation tasked with preserving our historic environment and our assets. Perhaps you should be saying that there are some buildings that are so precious that they require special measures. I'm not getting in terms of your evidence as a whole. I'm not getting a sense that you're coming forward with your prioritising buildings like the Macintosh. To a degree, we do prioritise buildings and the categories of buildings reflect that. There are category A listed buildings, which are just 7-7. Your answer illustrates the point that I'm trying to make. Surely, as the organisation protecting our built environment, that should be absolutely uppermost in your mind? I would say that our involvement with the Macintosh has been very detailed and very close over many years. We have paid more attention to that than others because of the nature of the activities that have gone on in particular post the first fire. It has had special attention, but it still doesn't allow us to go beyond our role and remit in what we can require. Thank you very much. We'll have to close it and thank you for your time today. We'll suspend and move into private session. We'll suspend briefly. Apologies. On the agenda is to consider the biannual reports from the Scottish Government relating to a range of EU issues. Can I ask members if they've got any views or comments on the report? We are on the record. It was Ivan McKee's letter, the second page at the start, where he says at the end of 2017, we were notified the value of the programmes had been reduced by 22 million as a result of the expenditure targets for 2017 not being met. Officials are working hard to ensure... The paragraph follows the same theme, but I don't know if we want to ask for a bit more detail on that. We could ask for more detail on that. I was particularly interested in the reduction of the number of unemployed young people in the south west of Scotland, which I represent. Yes, because that paragraph talks about that as well, because that's one of the programmes that went down. That's his explanation for it and other ones about not being met. I suppose just asking them would be for the reasons for them not being met. Sir, you're not sure there's been a reduction in youth and employment from 1900 to 1200? Actually, I've got a specific date also on space, because when I asked the question in the chamber, the minister only gave me percentage figures, I suppose, to numbers of real people. I'm just wondering if we can ask how much of that would be due to the impact of European structural funds. Okay, I think we can write to the minister asking that. I think we may also wish to ask about the one plus two languages policy and ask for an update on that, because there were some interesting trends in the uptake of language courses across a range of qualifications. So I think it would be useful, given the downward trend in that, to ask more questions there. Finally, the report contains an update in relation to horizon 2020. I think it would be useful to obtain further information on what scenario planning the Scottish Government has done in relation to the access to horizon 2020 funds post 2020. Sorry, convener, on the languages thing, I think what's interesting is that there's been quite a significant increase between 2017 and 2018 in terms of the SCQF level at level 3, a 23% increase, but level 4 has been a 13.6% decrease, and there's also been smaller decreases at level 5, 6 and 7. And we get the same for the passes. So I'm just wondering if we could ask why is there such a, you know, why has there been such a dramatic increase at level 3 and such a decrease at level 4? What has been done to impact upon those figures? Yes, I think that's a good point. Thank you, convener. Clearly the major factor that will affect language take-up is, A, the availability of that subject choice in the education environment that you've written. So I'd be keen to learn from the Government what the trends have been in relation to the number of languages available to pupils, and secondly the availability of language teachers. And I don't see any date in this with regards to, again, trends in the number of teachers for each specific language that they want to promote. So I think with that additional information we can then see if those are additional factors in relation to the language take-up. If they're keen to meet those commitments, then surely that needs to be followed through with appropriate language choices and adequate teacher numbers. We can specifically ask about those points in the letter. Ross Creer. Thank you. On exactly the same vein as Jamie Greene's points, some of the information that Jamie's decided is not being here is information that the Education Committee has begun to gather for a piece of work that it will be doing this year on subject choice in school. Languages are obviously a core part of where there are issues with subject choice. My suggestion would be that much of the information that Jamie's decided that would be useful for this committee, the Education Committee has already begun gathering or has entirely gathered, but some of what's included in here I think would be of use to the Education Committee. So if we can flag this section of the report up to them ahead of the work that they or we are about to begin. I'm sure the clerks can do that. I think from a cultural and European aspect as well, not just European. There's an issue about what languages as well and breadth of languages. If we actually look at it, when the L2 is hugely weighted in favour of French and in L3 it's primary, it's Spanish, it's dominant, but there are so many languages one would expect to be included here that aren't. And the obvious one for example would be things like Russian, Arabic, you know, these kind of languages. You know languages that are really important for commerce, Hindi even. I think we should be looking to ask the Scottish Government what steps are they taking to try and expand the number and choices of languages that we actually have. Especially if we're going to be outside Europe, things like Russian, Arabic, Hindi will be particularly important one. Okay, thank you for that. Annabelle Ewing? Yes, just with regard to this area of the report. So obviously Erasmus plays a role here and it has a wider role to play and I think it would be really helpful to seek further clarity on Erasmus vis-a-vis the issue of the 1 plus 2 language policy and how it has played a role and what is anticipated going forward in the wider context of Brexit. There is no deal, deal, Erasmus, because it is such a fantastic scheme and it is a worry I know to everybody that what's going to happen and further to our discussions with, I think, UP CREP in our visit to Brussels, I think there are certain perhaps unhelpful suggestions about the way that the UK Government is going to proceed in terms of its focus and its priority which may change. Yes. No, that's very important and of course we did conduct an extensive inquiry into the future of Erasmus on this committee and forward it to ministers and a large amount of language teaching as you say funded by Erasmus. If I could also add on the point about Horizon 2020 and I think that we need to find out what happens to that in the event, no deal. I don't imagine the Scottish Government to have those answers but I think we should raise our concerns about it. Alexander, did you want to come in? I think you've identified, you know, we heard yesterday that there's contingencies in place and the Scottish Government doing specific things. I think you've identified in either with Erasmus and 2020 that we should be really focusing in to see exactly where we are and what is in place to ensure that we can't manage the situation depending on what happens. Okay, thanks very much. Are members content to write to the minister on all those points? Right. We can now move into private session.