• This Executive Summary will briefly address in turn each item of the remit set for the Inquiry and provide an overview of the related findings of the Inquiry. It will not seek to repeat the chronology of events which is detailed in Section 5 or repeat the more in-depth analysis behind the findings as contained in the relevant sections of this Report. Only the more significant findings will be presented here. The full list of recommendations emanating from this Report is provided in Section 13.
• Before presenting the Executive Summary on the remit items, the Inquiry would wish to emphasise the importance of the subject matter underlying this Inquiry and of the need for the matters raised by it to be properly addressed by the construction industry itself, by public sector and other clients of the construction industry, by regulatory authorities and by actions of Governments as necessary.
• This Report has addressed the remit set for it, which did not extend to a wider investigation of the potential prevalence of the defects that led to the collapse of the Oxgangs School wall in all buildings or building types recently constructed in Scotland. It is impossible to draw definitive conclusions as to the answer to this question without relevant evidence. However, it would be naïve to assume that the lack of quality control evidenced in the construction of the walls of the Edinburgh schools is limited either to Edinburgh or to school buildings.
• The fact that no injuries or fatalities to children resulted from the collapse of the gable wall at Oxgangs School was a matter of timing and luck. Approximately 9 tons of masonry fell on an area where children could easily have been standing or passing through. One does not require much imagination to think of what the consequences might have been if it had happened an hour or so later.
• The Inquiry has become aware that this was one of five avoidable incidents of external masonry panels failing in strong winds at Scottish schools in the last few years. Five may seem a relatively modest number but, given the potential implications of failures of this type, one such collapse is one too many. The reason that the incidents are described as avoidable is that in all cases it would appear that proper quality control at the time of building could have identified and have rectified the basic defects in construction that led to the failures.
• As will be seen in this Report, in addition to the 17 schools in Edinburgh, evidence has been provided on the discovery at a number of other schools in Scotland of panels of brick or blockwork, located at high levels in school buildings, that were not securely fixed. Similar construction defects to those discovered in the Edinburgh schools were also found at these schools.
• The underlying faults that gave rise to this Inquiry occurred during the original period of procurement, design and construction of the PPP1 schools between 2000 and 2005.
• The remediation of all 17 PPP1 schools, undertaken in the first half of 2016, while it should not have been required and unquestionably caused very considerable disruption to pupils, parents and teachers, was completed to a good standard within a comparatively short period of time through the combined and significant efforts of the City of Edinburgh Council, ESP, Galliford Try, Amey and their professional advisers. For this they should be commended.