It’s time for the Building Commission to take a harder line on shoddy builders

As NSW attempts to build 378,000 new homes by July 2029, the state’s Building Commission finds itself with no shortage of work.

Four in 10 new standalone houses with defects are not being rectified within the time frame set by the commission, Max Maddison reports on Sunday.

Home owners are left in the lurch when rectification orders are defied.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The good news is the expansion of the commission’s remit and budget to include standalone houses for the past year is worthwhile.

The bad news is we have learnt serious defects are not limited to apartments.

As we press the much-needed fast-forward button on development, we should pause to consider why defective work has become so prevalent and consider what can be done to address it.

Before his retirement in August, building commissioner David Chandler said there was a “deep denial about the quality of home construction”. Inspections of class 1 buildings (standalone homes) since last December showed there was “widespread, statewide non-compliant construction going on”.

More than 3000 complaints about standalone homes were registered with the commission this year.

There are so many problems it is difficult to know where to start.

So let’s start with the real problem: too many houses and apartments in Sydney are being built with serious defects. Too often this is a lack of, or poor, waterproofing, a major defect that can cause structural damage, mould and concrete cancer, as well as damaging floor and wall coverings and fixtures.

Serious defects are occurring because of a shortfall in qualified builders, and some deficiencies in education among others.

You don’t have to look very far on the Building Commission’s work orders website to find the common problems. “Onsite it was observed that no evidence of a waterproofing vertical membrane or any upturned flashing has been installed to the underside of the sill section of the glass sliding door protecting from any moisture ingress,” a recent rectification order reads. Translation: when it rains, water is going to come in through the door frame.

The problem is worse in newer suburbs in the city’s west. Grahame McCulloch, a third-party building inspector, has told The Sun-Herald that defective building work was “very, very widespread” in the parts of Sydney’s south-western greenfield fringe. He says so-called “accelerated learning pathways” for tradespeople have left a broader pool of underqualified workers to choose from.

Once a defect is reported, the building commission steps in, to catch and kill as much shoddy work as it can. If work isn’t rectified in the time frame set by the commission, builders face conditions being put on their licences, possibly losing their licences and ultimately going out of business. But owners of standalone homes are often left in the lurch, faced with spending more money on legal challenges or waiting for a high threshold to access a compulsory insurance scheme.

The upside of the commission’s work is anyone building a new home can easily check a builder’s licence on the Verify NSW website. They can demand to see the builder’s Home Building Compensation Fund insurance certificate before allowing work to start. Buying an apartment? Check the list of rectification orders first.

New building commissioner James Sherrard told the Herald this month he did not believe the proportion of rectification orders defied represented a compliance problem for the regulator.

But they do for the home owner.

On the score of transparency, the building commission is doing good work. But in terms of compliance, and weeding out dodgy builders, there is still some way to go.

Over to you, Mr Sherrard.

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