Fascinating post by a structural engineer who actually inspected projects by this firm is over in the reddit discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_s...
I came from construction out in the mines so OH&S and engineering inspections were quite literally our daily jam, moving to the construction industry for residential/commercial in Sydney I was blown away by what I saw!
We would quite literally have days where the site would be filled with teams of workers brought in on buses, mixtures of migrants from eastern europe (like bulk euro's) and parts of asia who would be PUMPING out the welding, concreting and general construction. The site would literally be buzzing with activity...then you would rock up the next day and the place would be near empty...jobs half done all over the place. Sometime during the empty days...the inspections would happen, be they OH&S or engineering or whoever else had to suss shit out to tick some boxes.
Point is, they would actively pull guys off site because these teams were dodgy as shit at working, I spent my days regularly just counting the OH&S breaches I witnessed. Hell I even called the asbestos investigation team on a company I worked for because the breaches were just too ridiculous for me to handle...nothing happened. Kents are still making their workers rip out asbestos with no protective gear and making a shit ton in profit because they dump it using businesses that dump it illegally. These are MBA registered businesses too, and don't even begin to think the MBA doesn't know this shit goes on regularly, its a large portion of their members participating in these acts. They are dodgy as hell.
/rant
For our US friends MBA is the Master Builders Assoiciation [0], not people with a Masters of Business Administration.
At least they caught it before it was fully constructed, but it still cost almost as much to tear it down as it did to build!
Those businesses should learn the hard way why it should be cheaper to do it correctly.
We moved in (renting) when it was brand new, peeling the plastic off the appliances etc. Within 1 year they were doing MAJOR fixes to building-scale defects in the construction, and within 2-3 years we had cracks in the walls, paint flaking off, doors that didn't line up, windows that didn't seal when closed. This is on a ~8th level apartment, and these aren't cheap apartments. They're not luxury, but they're comfortable in the "mid-to-high" end of the Sydney scale, just on the edge of the CBD.
We since moved out of Sydney, but we'll never live in a new-build Apartment again. The hell we went through, just as a renter in those few years, was mind boggling. Giving engineers and tradies access to our apartment seemingly every week, sometimes every day for days on end, so they could inspect and fix issues. I can't even imagine how bad it is for people who got suckered/conned into buying those POS apartments.
Multiple weeks with 2 adults and 2 kids and all our belongings in the single dry room while they stripped the inside and outside of our apartment to bare concrete, sealed it all, and rebuilt all the interior, drywall, carpets, etc.
Because we rented, we received no compensation or assistance. Yay Victorian tenants rights (or lack thereof).
We're now in a 30yr old double brick house (with all new high quality interior) in a rural city and never been happier. We'll never live in an apartment or major Australian city again.
I am reminded of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul, Korea. This happened in 1995. This was a very high end department store from what I heard. I know acquaintances who know of a family that lost multiple family members.
The family that owned the building was one of those chae-bul family in S. Korea with multiple business interests. I believe in top 50 at the time or something like it. So yes they were politically connected. But because of the catastrophic failure of the building with mass casualty, the family's entire holding was liquidated to pay for compensation to the victims' families. And the owner/owner's son both served lengthy prison terms.
Edit: While reading up on Sampoong incident, I learned the owner wanted original construction firm to take shortcuts to reduce cost, but they refused. So the owner fired the firm and started HIS OWN construction firm to build the building. At least someone had a backbone, stuck to what was right, and lost a big job/contract, but was proved to be in the right. I bet someone at the original construction firm let out a huge sigh of relief later.
Meriton is competent enough to put up buildings that won’t fall down on their own.
"The total number of past and future claims made against James Hardie for asbestos-related diseases is estimated to be more than 12,500, of which 8103 will be claimed after 2006."[1]
I wouldn't count on that. 18 months later there have still been no prosecutions (or even open court cases AFAIK) regarding the Grenfell Tower disaster. It'll most likely be years or decades before that happens.
If it turns out this was caused by someone being negligent, they will continue endangering the lives of other people until that happens.
Strata title laws have been changed recently, but the system is slow to catch up to these cowboys.
How do you encourage not doing that? Enforcement is one angle but are there others? Force the buyers to have insurance and then let the insurance company eat the risk assessment?
For a very good explanation of the mechanism that causes this kind of normalization of deviance, I recommend Richard Cook's outstanding talk "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"[1].
We’ll see a return to very conservative designs though, with no 100 storey skyscrapers until they find people actually willing to pay for and perform good work.
Until we are actually sending people bankrupt or jailing them, the corruption will worsen. There has to be some actual penalty for people trying to pass off shonky work.
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death." (Code of Hammurabi)
The need for effective regulation and proper enforcement come with a long tradition in construction business.
The problem stated by the linked Reddit commentator happens because the interests of everyone (architects, engineers, constructors and inspectors) currently align to de-prioritize safety.
There's numerous reasons why that doesn't happen. One being that no individual apartments might have been sold before the construction is finished, but another reason could be that building codes have been good enough, so people think of that as a waste of money.
Your whole comment can be condensed down to "I think poor people should have to live in dangerously built housing and die but it'll be their own fault for being poor."
There needs to be much more regulation with much higher penalties for failures, and a dismantlement of the incentives of corruption.
Yet I don't think you'd say that someone advocating that we continue that system thinks that poor people should drive dangerously built cars, and it'll be their own fault of they die in car accidents.
I'm pointing out that it's interesting that there seems to be no analogous mechanism to ensure safety when it comes to buying houses, which are a much bigger investment than a car.
> There needs to be much more regulation[...]
If the Reddit OP is to be believed the problem isn't that there aren't regulations, but that they're systematically not being enforced.
> [...]with much higher penalties for failures[...]
I doubt that would work as well as aligning incentives. Even if you gave engineers the death penalty for cutting corners they stand to make a lot of money, and most of the time they'd get away with it. How many buildings in Sydney aren't in the news?
> [...]a dismantlement of the incentives of corruption[...]
The best way to dismantle such incentives is to ensure that there's conflicting interests. Here buyers are being screwed over by the builders, certifying authorities and the councils because the interests of all three align to screw buyers over.
In the US, Canada, and I presume Australia, the design engineer is actually separate from the contractor. Generally, there is a developer who pays all the design consultants and the contractor to make the project reality. So the engineer really doesn't stand to make money from cutting corners. In fact, they have much to lose, including their ability to continue practicing engineering (it's a regulated profession) Their fee is the same if it gets built correctly or not, and it costs them nothing extra to ensure it's built correctly and mistakes are rectified.
I think this is accidentally being uncharitable. It's possible that GP did not think all the way through to the conclusion you saw. A more accurate inference that doesn't assume hatred of the poor from GP would be something like "this will lead to a system where only the rich can verify the quality of housing" and stopping there.
One day someone came to him, offered him additional payment to ignore cost skimming, and told him he's got a nice family and that it would be a shame if something bad happened to them. He quit the same day.
When you have organized crime involvement market forces cannot be relied upon.
The real problem is in the purchasing of Chinese Steel, which supposedly passes muster, but clearly cannot. Hence, Bay Bridge.
But - IMO - this is what was so fucking shady about taking all the steel from the towers on 9/11 and shipping/selling them off to china.
Then we pull a PR Bullshit move of "incorporating" some of the steel in a fucking destroyer ship as some limp "Freedom Flex"
The incorporation of tower steel into a war vessel was a fuck you from the people who profited off the event.
https://www.courthousenews.com/engineer-unfazed-reports-subp...
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There are other articles about it...
Right but there are also articles about Dyson Steel:
https://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-supplier-fai...
I chose my words carefully. I didn't intend to say that Chinese Steel is magic. Just that they're not the only culprit. If we'd picked up more Ohio steel we'd probably be in the same situation.
In countries with strong regulatory requirements, you generally don't have to worry about builders 'diluting' because it is inspected by the design engineer and tested by 3rd party testing companies. It is in the engineers best interest to ensure compliance because they are legally liable in that regard. You can actually be suspended from practicing engineering if you do not comply with field review requirements. If our design calls for 35MPa concrete, samples are taken at the job site, tested, and reported back to the contractor and designer. If they come up short, it gets remediated.
The idea being that your point inspection are finite. And the responsibility will be laundered behind a legal or organizational structure. Youre not going to reach anyone “responsible” for systemic issues. And as soon as you do that youll dampen all relevant investment activity. See the Washington State Condominium Act for a great example.