One thing I wish this article called out: Grenfell was not unique. About 400 other high-rise buildings have been or are being remediated for having some combination of the cladding and insulation used at Grenfell.
Some of the testimony is absolutely sickening and despicable - the insulation manufacturers coming up with a 'clever' way to lie about the fire rating of their material, and a few other things.
But mostly the testimony reminded me of how complicated the world is, and how little we know about our own jobs. (Perhaps this is more unique to me, but I suspect not).
The architects felt like they were only specifying a design and the 'look and feel' of materials.
The fire safety specialists concentrated their comments on egress and smoke extraction systems.
The inspectors concentrated on external appearance.
And so on, and so on. Everybody felt like they were just doing their job. Work and real life are complicated, and there are always time and budget pressures, so people just don't have the time and attention to pick up on all the things that we notice after the fact.
---
A few brief reflections: Beware of a culture of 'pencil-whipping' tests. If you raise a safety/security concern with your manager and they don't want to know about it, it's a very bad sign. If you have a safety/security concern raise it explicitly in email. Beware of rare events: it was clear from testimony that very few people involved in the project even imagined a large systemic fire risk, it wasn't on their radar.