Premier Technical Services Group PLC (PTSG), which undertakes a significant amount of work in the field of fire solutions in public and private high-rise buildings, has welcomed today’s announcement by the government for a major investment in safer cladding in 150 private high-rise blocks in England.
The catalyst for the major £200m investment was, of course, the Grenfell fire of 2017 in which 72 people lost their lives. In one of the UK’s worst modern disasters, it took just minutes for the fire to spread upwards and around all four sides of the building, engulfing it in flames.
PTSG’s rope access and fire solutions teams have worked on a number of private and public sector building removing and replacing cladding over the last 12 months. The team consists of some of the industry’s leading building access specialists.
Commenting on the disaster at the time, Paul Atkins of PTSG’s fire solutions southeast team, told BBC London: “If they’d had a sprinkler system the fire would have been deluged before it got to the cladding. People would’ve had plenty of time to leave the building. To date no-one has ever died in a fire with a sprinkler system in the household.”
All PTSG’s sprinkler systems for commercial and residential buildings are installed in accordance with the BS9251 standard and wet risers are installed to the current BS9990 2015 standard. PTSG’s specialist Building Access and Fire Solutions teams offer a wide range of services to ensure the safety of building users in the event of a fire, including safe cladding installation, wet and dry-risers installation and maintenance, sprinklers and other extinguisher systems, fire alarms and emergency lighting installation and testing.
