By Tom Lowe2021-05-07T08:37:00+01:00 Facade expert said a ‘reasonably competent’ cladding contractor should have known risks of ACM The construction industry had its “head in the sand” over the dangers of combustible cladding prior to the Grenfell Tower fire, a facade engineer has told the inquiry into the disaster. Expert witness Jonathan Sakula, who has worked on 122 projects across the world, said the industry had been aware of a series of 20 major cladding fires in the years leading up to the June 2017 blaze which claimed 72 lives. Seven of the fires occurred in towers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that were widely reported, including at the 63-storey Address hotel in Dubai where similar ACM panels to those used on Grenfell Tower contributed to the spread of flames.