Skip to main content

Construction issues resolution in Sydney - Part 11



Yet another important milestone in the long process of fixing the building defects in the strata block - Fair Trading came out for second inspection last Wednesday 30/07/2014.

New defects and old defects that were not yet fixed have been on the list.
Major defect types are:

- Water leakage in bathrooms/showers into bedrooms in 100% of reported units;
- Cheap material used for tiling in bathrooms/showers that last only for 6 months and then require re-sealing;
- Flooring issues - timber/bamboo laid out incorrectly, color mismatch;
- Water leakage from the outside into units;
- Efflorescence in tiling work in courtyards and pathways;
- Negligent manner of work and absence of quality material and control of work - many defects have been somehow addressed by the sub-contractors sent by the builder, but without proper result.

Some units have got tenants so it was not easy to organise for an inspection for them. Here I'd suggest to identify and report all the defects before you rent out the unit - if possible, as some defects are hard to see straight away.

There is also other surprise - Fair Trading takes to account that the builder has not finished rectifying their previous order items, but the only thing they can do is to issue a non-compliance order and then the owner or owners corporation should take it to tribunal from there.
It seems like only a few people really take it to the tribunal that's why builders are very slow and use any opportunity to delay their work.
This should be addressed somehow by the legislation.

More and more people choose strata living, because they can't afford a separate property. However builders may use this nature of strata living to do their job negligently and even when people paid that much for a property they have to spend years trying to rectify issues that should have been done within 6 or 12 months as per contract!

Anyway the owners corporation in our case are now waiting for the Fair Trading to come back with a new rectification order for all defective units and take it from there.

2 years and 7 months in the process!

Other posts from this story.

Also have a look at my post regarding strata living and what to look at before and when you buy a strata unit.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wine - 2011 Brown Brothers Crouchen Riesling

Very nice wine with fruity taste - peach and pear: Consumed with Hungarian salami. Tasting notes .
Post a Comment
Read more

Scrum - Team Culture and Wall Manifesto

In the Scrum framework one of the key components is the wall and daily stand-up. In some organisations I worked with the whole concept of the wall is not accepted by many developers, because of the stand-up necessity and "time waste". Very often all that methodology is used for the sake of methodology and not to achieve what we actually do - adding or creating value to our customer (usually called "The Business"). I can understand frustration that is caused by the wall and stand-up process. From the software developer perspective it is really a waste of time for the following reasons: 1. In 95% of cases developers are head down working like hell delivering valuable outcomes that they are accountable for. Extra effort to go to the wall, staying there for 15-30 minutes and listening or not listening to what others were doing yesterday and will be doing tomorrow is annoying for them; 2. The mere fact of having to do something mandatory to do that looks like
Post a Comment
Read more

Mastering The Multitasking

There is usually two distinct perspectives on multi-tasking: 1. Multitasking is counterproductive. We get distracted by multiple tasks that all get our way and fight for our scarce attention, time and resources. This leads to a common fallacy that if you do multiple activities “at a time” you are not doing good work in any of those. 2. Multitasking is a way of getting many things done in a short period of time or in a long run. Indeed it can be either a disaster or a great helper depending on how it is used and practiced. Most recent research shows that we don’t do multiple tasks purely in parallel or simultaneously. That means we don’t purely multi-task, but switch between tasks and execute them one at a time, but by spending very small timeframes on each task. A good example from the history is a story about Julius Caesar capabilities in that area. Plutarch writes, “Caesar disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directi
1 comment
Read more