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Catherine Rollison @catrollison
, 14 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
Residential towers on the east coast of Australia are a perfect storm for defective works. My first experience in the construction industry taught me the importance of checks and balances.
A thread.
In 2000, as an engineering work experience student I tagged along to a site inspection with a structural engineer. He had designed the building, a commercial tower in Melbourne’s CBD. He was there to check the steel reinforcement (reo) had been installed correctly,
before it was covered by concrete. On this day we were inspecting the columns on level 6 and discovered that the reo coming up out of the level 5 column was incorrect. There was not enough steel/strength in the column.
[Columns are large/strong on ground floor and thin/weak on top floor. Because weight. Now you know why carparks are seemingly full of large columns and penthouses are spacious].
Returning to structural engineers office the error was re-modelled on a computer and an instruction provided to the contractor to remedy it, essentially drilling more reo into the concrete. This required re-inspection by the same engineer before the pour could take place.
The concrete pour would be delayed by one or two critical days.
What struck me about this situation is that it presented little fanfare for all involved. The engineer would likely pass on additional charges and the contractor would pay . But the main thing was it was rectified.
Why had it happened? Human error. Maybe the steel fixer was working off the wrong plans, level 7 instead of level 5. Revision A instead of revision B. Maybe they weren’t paying enough attention or didn’t understand the detail. It happens.
18 years later I can tell you that these kinds of issues are commonplace in an industry which relies on checks and balances - and which can only produce quality where someone is willing to pay - and wait for - these checks and balances.
Back to residential towers. Compared with commercial towers - where the quality of the investment 20 yrs after its build is important to the owner, after all, the owner is a landlord and commercial tenants are sophisticated, legally represented, discerning and spoilt for choice.
Residential developers? What do they care about the quality of the build? The building is owned by dozens if not hundreds of unaligned strangers. Individuals who bought the dream of home ownership provided in a glossy brochure. Change the contract? Beef up the warranties? Nope.
There is someone else who will buy it as is. Statutory warranties only go so far, and are the builder’s problem, not the developer, who is pinching pennies. In NSW and Victoria private surveyors can issue the certificates which say the building meets minimum standards.
[You can thank Jeff Kennett for that ‘reform’–its called cutting red tape– Councils took too long doing their checks properly!] Each check and balance, whether from an engineer, council or expert, costs money. Passing design responsibility further down the chain makes it cheaper!
Send the grad engineer to do the site inspection. The signature is all that’s needed, never mind if they don’t understand the detail any better than the steel fixer. Get the subby to design it AND sign it off. Money off the bottom line is seen as the goal at every turn.
The sooner residents can move in, the sooner the millions roll in. Fast is cheap. Cheap is fast. Residential tower developments have no incentive for the cost and time of checks and balances. The defects we know about today are the tip of the iceberg.
End.
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