Welcome to the Faulty Towers state, where any mug's an engineer

I’m sorry, run that by me again? We don’t require engineers to be licensed, qualified or registered? So the hundreds of shonky-looking resi-towers newly metastasising across our city don’t just look like slums-in-waiting but may have no structural or fire integrity to speak of because anyone, including my great aunt Cecily’s dog Tozer, can sign their engineering certificates. Seriously?

Tuesday’s interim report on the twice-evacuated Opal tower, by engineering professors Hoffman, Cart and Foster, tells us the building is structurally sound, in that it (probably) won’t fall down, but has major damage. Two causes are pinpointed: faulty design, using lower-than-required safety factors, and poor construction, deviating from both design and good practice.

The building, as you know, is pretty ornery to look at. A green glass faceted triangle far taller than any neighbours, its look of soulless oppression is relieved only by a number of tall “slots” or “vertical gardens”, walled in six-storey pre-cast load-bearing concrete. It’s in these walls, and the beams supporting them, that the damage has principally occurred.

But what’s fascinating about this appalling concatenation of errors and deceits is the degree to which it is systemic. We don’t know how widespread building disasters are because no-one is collecting data, but as the UNSW City Futures Research Institute recently wrote, our “system allowing defective apartment buildings” creates huge social and economic risks for the new compact city.

In our world, building is driven by profit. Beneath that, three systems intersect: legal, planning and engineering. If I owned a new Sydney apartment – which thank God I don’t – all three would be keeping me awake at night.

One, the legal situation. Although Opal may not collapse, the hundreds of owners currently embarking on a “no win no fee” class action may yet wish it had. At least then they’d be covered.

You buy an apartment trusting it to be sound, waterproof and safe. But the odds heavily are against you. Not only do studies show that almost three-quarters of apartment buildings have owner-reported defects (the figure rises to 85 per cent for buildings built after 2000) but the owners’ capacity to claim against the builder/developer is restricted to near-futility.

In 2015, amendments to the NSW Home Building Act reduced the standard seven-year liability period to six years for “major” defects – defined as a fault in a major element such as a roof or load-bearing structure that prevents a building being lived in – and a mere two years for everything else. Ostensibly, this was about reducing red tape, but those with a mere hundred-litre stormwater dam in their living room or a rotting front door had better be quick.

Any boom encourages fly-by-night developers, tempting them with quick bucks to employ underqualified and inexperienced architects, builders and subbies, who are more available and cheaper. Look around. Anyone with half an architectural eye can see defects everywhere – roof, window, balustrade and wall-capping details that invite water entry; structural sizings that are self-evidently inadequate; stuck-on plastic claddings. Such defects are often "latent" – which is to say they may not
present for years and may take further years to diagnose. At least if your building collapses you have six years, not two.