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Unacceptable Solutions Episode 2: It Was Always Anything But Acceptable

In the parallel universe of acceptable standards for building products and construction, the regulators talk about pathways to compliance and alternative solutions. In simple terms this means that there is more than one way to get a building product approved. 

Before we proceed down any pathways, let’s start with the basic goal of the Building Code of Australia. The BCA is designed to achieve and maintain acceptable standards of structural sufficiency, health and amenity for the community now and in the future including safety form fire. 

This is a lofty goal indeed, but there’s a catch, there’s always a catch – the second goal of the BCA is to - ‘go no further than is necessary in the public interest’ – and this is why the BCA sets minimum standards of compliance which is at the core of the cladding crisis. 

With that as the stated goal let's proceed down the BCA pathway to compliance for combustible cladding. There are five steps.

Step 1 Things that form part of a wall must be non-combustible. 

Step 2 Noncombustible means it passes a test called AS 1530.1 where a sample of the wall is put into a furnace to see how fast it burns. 

Step 3 If you can’t pass the furnace test because your wall sample burns too quickly you can use a product that does burn, but not that quickly, that is on the ‘deemed to satisfy’ list.

Step 4 A type of product called bonded laminate is on the deem to satisfy list and it is one where each laminate is non-combustible, each adhesive layer is not more than 1 mm thick and the spread of fire and smoke tests are passed.  

So far so good, but step 5 is where things get weird. 

In step 5 the manufacturers of ACP would have it that the laminate that step 4 talks about is actually the pieces of aluminum that sandwich the polyethylene and not the polyethylene itself so you pull it apart and test the aluminum only and not the stuff burns like petrol. And not surprisingly when you do that the aluminum bits itself passes the furnace test so we’re all good to go. 

While this argument apparently appeased the property professionals for 3O years it took the judge in the Lacrosse case just 6 words to dismiss it when he said after carefully considering the whole structure of the BCA the argument put by the defendants in getting to step 5, ‘defies both logic and common sense’. 

The intergovernmental board responsible for the Australian testing standards, the Australian Building Codes Board did not come off unscathed either. The judge cited evidence of at least 3 instances when the board had information before it that ACP should not be tested using a furnace. 

A report to the ABCB in 2000 warned that the furnace testing method wasn’t appropriated for ACP and should be replaced with a full ‘as constructed wall test that then being used in Canada. That was 14 years before the Lacrosse fire. 

There is a minute of an ABCB meeting in Canberra in October 2010 where it notes the very ACP product involved in both Grenfell in London and Lacrosse in Melbourne does not comply with the BCA deemed to satisfy standards. That was 4 years before the lacrosse fire.

And finally, in late 2010 there was a report put to the ABCB that rejected the notion – that is inexplicably still the law today - that ACP with no more than 30 % combustible material is acceptable.  

On any view the BCA goals have not been met and the arguments mounted to suggest otherwise don’t pass the logic and common-sense test that our courts have upheld on our behalf. They have not kept the community safe now and in the future. Like land mines buried in the sand the community still doesn’t know where these panels are or how many are around. And also, like land mines, they may sit undetected and undetonated forever, but then again they may not.