Grenfell drama Value Engineering exposes how cost-cutting cost lives

ft.com

10 points·Breadmaker··4 comments

https://www.grenfellvalueengineering.com/

Cost-cutting is useful and important. We do it all the time in our personal lives and obviously so do businesses. This is partly what allows us to get the abundance of affordable products and services we all enjoy today.

The problem is when costs are cut by cutting corners, which is not the same thing. Often, attacking "cost-cutting" is a political stance (it can be an attack on for-profit companies, and capitalism in general).

In my view, what happened is a mix of cutting corners, failure of regulation, and murky commercial practices.

There are only so many costs that can reasonably be cut so when you have a culture of cost cutting it’s only a matter of time before the system incentivizes cutting costs by cutting corners. Most of our “affordable” products in the West are affordable at the expense of other people’s’ health, safety, and welfare. We’ve zealously cut costs to further our profits and consumerism and those who are poor and/or living in emerging economies usually bear the burden.

Of course cutting costs beyond of point means cutting corners. But that's a different issue and what I highlighted.

I also disagree with your assessment of our "affordable products", they have enabled hundreds of millions of people to be lifted out of poverty.

I feel a big part of your reply highlights the point I made about the stance being political, which is fine up to a point but, IMHO, realism and pragmatism should prevail.

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