Summary Draft 1

Gren-Fell into a burning chain

In the article ‘Eight failures that left people of Grenfell Tower at mercy of the inferno’ Knapton & Dixon (2017) claims that the Grenfell Tower had numerous lapses in both ‘building regulation and safety rules’ which further augmented during the incident.
Buildings in London followed the Building Acts until 1986 where external walls had at least one hour of fire resistance. ‘Class O’ regulation was introduced which removed the initial requirements regardless of being combustible. A specialist in fire protection remarked the gap between the claddings exacerbated the fire to upper levels. Burning material that fell down the gaps sped up the fire which “it acts as its own chimney.” Although materials used met the UK standards, it contributed the fire to spread and made fire-fighting impractical. There were no updated building regulations and the existing one does not enforce more than one escape route. The UK law made it compulsory for sprinklers up to 30 metres which leave taller buildings to omit on the upper levels. The Housing Minister stated that sprinklers were not compulsory for the house buildings due to high costs for the developers.  Not all doors were fire rated as the “building regulations are not retrospective”. No explicit instruction on the frequency of reviewing the risk assessment and how soon after any renovations. A specialist claimed that the firebreaks which were a requirement under Building Regulations 1991 were not doing its purpose during the fire.

While both the authors continue blaming the government and its regulations, it was unclear, did the residents continue to stay in the building with the knowledge of the imminent risk or was it the building management the real culprit on keeping the building not par with the regulation.

Reported Speech

Mr John claimed that he has a problem with spending excessively. It started during his time in National Service when he had a monthly allowance. It soon took a plunge when he completed his National service, as there was no more monthly allowance to feed his habit.

He felt the pinch of his habit due to no more monthly allowance, which resulted in him to reduce his expenditure and now slowly to try to kick the habit out.

Formal Introduction

Formal Introduction

Dear Brad

My name is Ahmad Akram, but you can address me as Akram. I am currently a first-year student in civil engineering at Singapore Institute of Technology.

Since young construction has always captivated me and having a keen interest in mathematics and physics in school, it was an obvious decision to apply for civil & structural engineering as my diploma in Singapore Polytechnic after my ‘O’ Levels. After graduating, I was employed at Land Transport Authority under the tunnelling department to be part of the various projects during my six years in the company.

Tunnel engineering is both intricate and challenging, apart from being interesting. From the start, when it comes to the planning to working along the alignment, limitations and the environmental considerations to mining under the ground which is heterogeneous and various challenges accompanied by on a regular basis.

My ambition is to become a qualified civil engineer. I work hard to gain the skills and knowledge in hopes to achieve. My company offered to sponsor me so that I could upgrade myself. However, since I was recently married and am expecting a new family arrival, I had a huge dilemma in whether to accept the offer. Eventually, I did accept the offer, thinking that this is a new set of challenges for me to overcome.

In my free time, I enjoy keeping fit, and I try to workout at least three times a week. I also enjoy spending time with my family. I love to travel, that is where I learn about other countries' culture, behaviour and infrastructure.

I believe one of my strengths in communication is that I can talk with people without qualms when the topic of discussion is something I am well versed in. Moreover, I strongly believe the cornerstone of my strength is that I always listen to the speaker carefully before answering.

At the same time, my weakness is that my writing skill is still developing. I normally speak and write with my judgement of whether it sounds fine with me. Even though I love to read, I dislike writing due to the fear I would make a lot of errors and this will paint a negative picture of me when the reader reads my writing.

Hopefully, during my time in this module. I would overcome my current limitations on fear of writing, by improving my grammar and understanding sentence structure.

Regards

Ahmad Akram

CVE1281

Group 4

edited on 20/1/19  at 8.30pm
commented on Lu Sheng, Jordan and Chun Siang.

Hello to all!

I would like to welcome everyone to my blog, which is created exclusively for Effective Communication module. I hope that thru this journey I can improve both my verbal and written communication. Thank you!