EVERY public body in the UK should review the build quality of their recently commissioned properties in light of the Cole Report into the Edinburgh Schools scandal, according to advice issued yesterday by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), the national professional body for architects.

They were commenting on the report into the so-called PPP1 Schools programme, a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project which went disastrously wrong when a wall at Oxgangs School collapsed in January last year. Subsequently, repairs had to be carried out on 17 of the PPP1 schools and 8000 pupils had their education disrupted for months.

The RIAS statement said the Cole Report “highlights highly significant risks” and added: “It is incumbent on every public commissioning authority to read this important, carefully written and considered report, consider its conclusions and act upon them.”

The RIAS admit that doing so will require significant expertise at substantial cost – “however, to not act may cost lives”.

The statement continued: “Public bodies have a duty of care to protect public health and safety. While the problems highlighted may not be of their making, they are nevertheless responsible.

“The Cole Report emphasises the potential danger from major latent defects in recently constructed buildings. The fact that the collapse of the wall bringing down nine tonnes of masonry at an Edinburgh Primary School in January 2016 did not result in infant deaths was, according to the report, down to mere ‘timing and luck’.”

The RIAS added that Professor Cole’s report signals that it “would be naive” to assume that the same issue may not affect other properties built around the same period (2000-2005) and under similar PFI procurement regimes since, even up to the present, which may, as in the Edinburgh case, have lacked “properly resourced and structured scrutiny of the building work”.

The President of the RIAS, Willie Watt, said: “When major inquiry reports are published there is a tendency for everyone to breathe a sigh of relief, mutter ‘well, that’s that dealt with’ and move on.

“That should not be the case with this, extremely well researched and deeply concerning report. The message is simple and the responsibility of all commissioning authorities is clear. An early process of inspection by appropriately qualified experts should proceed as urgently as the various public commissioning authorities, local, health and governmental, can muster the skilled individuals who can do this work.

“The Royal Incorporation’s own submission to the inquiry agreed strongly that, without diligent and careful checking at every stage of the building process, problems are almost inevitable. In this instance it was fortunate that nobody was injured, or killed.”

The Cole Report highlighted the fact that there was no overall clerk of works in charge of checking the construction of the schools.

That was part of the RIAS submission which stated that until comparatively recently “a clerk of works, usually a skilled senior tradesperson, was often employed by the employer to provide, trade-skills familiar, overseeing of the works on their behalf, and to report to the employer and the architect.

“Through this, defective works could be detected. If required, instructions would be issued to enable the correction of the works. Over and above this, independent inspections by the architect were carried out.

“Given that the architect had the obligation to withhold payment for defective works, this provided an effective reinforcing quality control mechanism. It can be appreciated that to disturb this mechanism introduces risks to the process... clerks of works are now rare to the point of being virtually non-existent.”

RIAS Secretary, Neil Baxter, said last night: “This [Cole] report demands a response – and don’t underestimate it – that response may save lives.”