President’s Comment – August 2024
When things go wrong, there will be a lot of finger-pointing. Who’s to blame? Why didn’t they do a better job? Who pays to fix the mess?
The quality and safety of buildings has always been an issue. The Great Fire of London in 1666 led to changes in building design, yet in 2017 72 people died in London’s Grenfell fire – an event that should never have happened. The inquiries continue, seven years later. Less spectacular and more prevalent, but equally deadly, are health issues arising from poor waterproofing of buildings and other quality issues – something apparently uncovered by the teams replacing cladding in Victoria.
The recent research report from Cladding Victoria poses the questions: why was combustible cladding used on so many Victorian multi-storey apartment buildings, and who was responsible? It looked at the drawings and permits of over 1000 buildings to try to understand why over 800 did not comply with building regulations for fire safety.
Its conclusions are sobering for industry professionals including architects, building designers, fire engineers and building certifiers in Victoria, and reflects similar problems around the world with flammable aluminium composite panels and expanded polystyrene products used in high-rise buildings.
What the Grenfell saga uncovered, however, is not the failings of a few professionals, but a widespread systemic failure of building construction processes, corruption, blatant falsification of testing, poor contracting practices, multiple failures of local authorities and governments, and putting profit before life safety. Suggesting that future building quality issues will be fixed by professionals certifying their work and a bit more professional development is not the answer.
It is interesting to note after multiple building quality failures in NSW, the government appointed David Chandler OAM as Building Commissioner and gave him authority to fix the whole system. He understood how buildings get built and had the courage to stand up to dodgy developers and builders and his political opponents. He introduced an approval system that demands proper drawings and provides evidence that what was designed was actually built as documented, and would be warrantied for many years by the builder. This has noticeably improved the quality of building in NSW.
The Cladding Victoria report does ask the question as to why professionals who did not clearly specify compliant cladding seemed to be unaware there was a problem, but was strangely uncurious as to why that might be the case. Was it false or misleading product information, reliance on other professionals, misinterpretation of complex codes, or complete lack of interest by government authorities? Multiple class actions against cladding suppliers suggest this might be the case. Were the contractual arrangements between developers, builders and those professionals such that undue pressure was placed on professionals to cut corners? Why were builders and developers ever allowed to engage private certifiers directly? Did building authorities ever stop to think that the products they saw out of their office windows every day might not comply with the code clauses they were writing? Did Federal Governments avoid any responsibility for checking certifications of imported products, or wholeheartedly act on the recommendations of the 2018 Senate Report into non-conforming building products?
The recommendations of the Cladding Victoria report are a pale echo of those of the 2018 Building Confidence Report – and we note many of the recommendations of that report have been delayed or only partly implemented because of a lack of resolve by the nine state and territory governments to act together to create a national framework for the construction industry.
What is the message for consumers who are entitled to sleep soundly in their 21st century high-rise apartments? Is proper reform of the construction industry just too hard? It seems easier to point the finger at a few players and ignore the complexity of what got us into this mess.
And the message for the professionals who were trying to act with “reasonable care”? Peter Apps, writing in the RIBA Journal about the lessons for architects from the Grenfell fire, suggests:
“Ultimately, and sadly, what the Grenfell Tower Inquiry calls on those in the construction sector to do is mistrust each other. But that can be healthy. If you expect sales people to come bearing snake oil and subcontractors to duck and dive and slice off the top, you are far less likely to be caught out when they do.”
This is a sad lesson for those who advocate for a collaborative approach to improving the built environment, but not as sad as those who have lost everything because the construction industry can’t provide safe buildings for all.