[Others.043] Flaws in the construction work for new buildings

I saw this article "A litany of defects and still no resolution" from Sydney Morning Herald the other day about nightmare of a brand new building in 25 Kelly Street Ultimo for all the residents. Have a read and tell me how you fell about it.

While you might think it's just another tragic story similar to the one I mentioned this post (Charlie's Sad Story) mid last year, but there's one very important point been mentioned in the article by Dominic Ogburn, who is a licensed building consultant and author:
"When a plumber does some work on a new building they are the ones who fill out the compliance certificate to say whether their work has been done properly."
"Often the certification provided is completely at odds with what has actually been built because the contractor is the only person who has to sign off on it."

I certainly agree that this is a major flaw for all the construction work of new buildings in Australia.

While you might say that all building companies have a site supervisor who checks every construction site weekly. Yes, that's true. But based on what we seen in ours, and a few other sites in the past few years, it's never enough.

Each site supervisor normally has to look after at least 20 sites, and you would be lucky if your supervisor can spend more than an hour or two in your site every week. Although we have inspectors from council or private ones (hired by builder), it's almost impossible to pick up every problems in a short hour or two's inspection.

So from purchaser/owner's point of view, it will certainly be safer if you can get your own inspector, and check everything you can think of, again, again and again before the hand over. Once you accepted the property or signed the dotted line and paid all the money, you lost control of everything!