Grenfell Tower image by Loz Pycock, London, UK - Grenfell Tower, CC BY-SA 2.0,

CILIP Conference returns to Birmingham on 2 and 3 July with a lineup of speakers from across the profession and beyond.

CILIP’s annual conference is a unique opportunity for anyone working in the Knowledge, Information Management and Library sectors to unite around shared goals and common ground.

CILIP Conference 2025 continues to focus on leadership priorities, bringing opportunities for emerging and aspiring leaders to join a community of established leadership practitioners. The conference offers a welcoming space to exchange ideas and hear from thought leaders and stars of the profession. Delegates will learn new insights into their own sectors, as well as having a window onto the work of peers working in different areas of the profession, helping to build a more rounded understanding of the opportunities and challenges that are on the horizon.

In the article below you can hear from one of this year’s speakers for the popular KM Strand that is running throughout CILIP Conference.

A project that has distilled the lessons learned from the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry is helping to shape future work at engineering and design firm, Arup. Kirsty Walker, a fire engineer at Arup, and one of the project team will be speaking at this year’s CILIP Conference and here she talks us through the project and its impact.

THE genesis of the project: Barbara Lane, supported by a team of fire engineers from Arup, acted as an expert witness for the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. During the preparation of evidence for the Inquiry, a vast quantity of information was produced by the team across several very large reports.

The Learnings from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry SharePoint page project was created to enable Arup colleagues to navigate effectively through the evidence, and therefore find relevant information which can be put to use on their projects.

The project was initiated by Farah Binte Mohd Faudzi, a senior fire engineer at Arup. The page was primarily intended for fire engineers, and therefore the project team is based out of the fire practice. The project leads, Farah and Graeme Flint, both worked on the Inquiry for several years and therefore had a good overview of the available information. Graeme was also able to provide direction on how users are most likely to benefit from interacting with the information. Matthew, Shane and I were then able to do the SharePoint development work on document signposting and webpage design, as well as contributing to user experience research and streamlining of the interface. who worked on the Inquiry. Since the page was created, it has been released to the wider firm and has been updated following feedback from users.

Knowledge resource

There are two ways that users can interact with the site. Firstly, each of the reports and videos hosted on the site have been provided with a summary description of the content, which allow users to navigate around the different documents and choose those that interest them. Additionally, as part of the summarising process, a map of the different topics covered by each report was also created.

The main work of the team therefore was to create an intuitive interface to allow users to navigate across the topic map to quickly find the information of most relevance to them. For example, some topics covered by the reports are smoke control systems, the testing of materials, and the timeline of events. The recordings of Barbara’s expert witness testimony have also been embedded into the relevant topic page at the point in the video where the topic is discussed. This was a really important part of the process, as the recordings are each several hours long and it is difficult for new users to navigate to the relevant points in each video.

The team developed a methodology for distilling the information by considering how the information could be used by a project team for informing future work. The key considerations were, structuring the page in an intuitive way for users to locate the information relevant to their query quickly; and in a manner that allows them to understand the topic, any background research, and the related challenges or advantages when considering items related to the topic.

Part of the team

I enjoyed being part of the team, it was satisfying seeing the page come together! I had clear instructions from Farah and Graeme, but I also felt I could feedback where I felt the page could be structured better for the user. Graeme and I are based in the Edinburgh team together; however, Farah was based in Bristol, Matthew in Manchester and Shane in Sheffield, so there was a lot communicating virtually to bring the project together. It was good to have a range of experience levels on the projects, from senior members of the team to Matthew, one of our apprentices. The resource is designed to be beneficial to all grades within the firm.

My experience of acting as fire engineer on complex projects, and the inconsistency I have witnessed in source information and reference documents, I understood the value in organising the site in a comprehensible way. It was understood that the resource would only be used if it was seen by users as valuable, and to make the project worthwhile it was important to think of the end-user throughout the process.

Access and engagement

A key advantage of SharePoint was that users have experience with the platform. Arup use SharePoint for hosting project sites in our everyday work. Furthermore, the modular nature of SharePoint allowed a simple structure to be build relatively quickly, without the need for deep coding skills, making it an accessible platform for non-experts. One challenge with working with SharePoint was that pages could not be worked on simultaneously by different users; therefore, it was essential to plan out who would work on which topic pages when and when the pages would be checked for quality assurance purposes.

I have presented the resource to the fire team at both a local, national and international level at various CPD sessions, since the page went live. The page is actively discussed when staff members are querying topics which are covered by the page, and users are encouraged to use the page in the first instance when looking for information. The page is impacting the work of Arup staff by providing a consistent starting point for decision making during everyday work. The project has been updated to include the Phase 2 of the Inquiry, and will continue to be updated per feedback from users.

I would like to thank my team for working with me on the project and I hope to continue to be part of teams which prioritise shaping a culture of learning and striving for improvement within the construction industry and beyond.

CILIP Conference 2025

During my talk, I will explore themes relating to learning from disasters and how knowledge management can lead to a deeper embedding of lessons learned and prevent disasters from repeating. Delegates can expect to take home a greater understanding of how highly technical information can be distributed to a wide audience to allow large scale upskilling within the construction industry and beyond.

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