Sydney Opal Tower: more cracks found in troubled towers

Investigators find new cracks in Sydney’s Opal Tower, which will force some residents to spend months elsewhere.

New cracks have been found widening in areas where pre-made concrete panels met concrete poured on site at Sydney’s Opal Building. Picture: Tim Pascoe

Investigators have found two more sets of cracks in Sydney’s Opal Tower, which engineers say will force some residents to spend months elsewhere while they are fixed.

One week after those living in the Olympic Park tower heard loud bangs and saw cracks appear on Christmas Eve, structural engineers from all groups investigating the tower today held a crisis meeting to discuss finding new cracks that were widening in areas where pre-made concrete panels met concrete poured on site.

Enormous metal supports have been installed to prevent further cracks, which were initially found on level 10 but have also been found in two places on level four, the design engineers behind the tower confirmed. The cracks on level four had reportedly widened from 3mm to 20mm over the past week, however the president and chief executive of engineering firm WSP Australia & New Zealand, Guy Templeton, said that was “completely not true”.

“We’ve gone through the rest of the building, that (cracking) has been there for an indeterminate amount of time, not necessarily the same,” he told The Australian. “It’s been monitored and it hasn’t moved at all. It’s just a bit of cracked concrete, not very exciting.”

Mr Templeton said in a statement the building was structurally sound.

“We have found no other areas of damage to the extent of that in one part of Level 10,” he said.

“There are fewer than 20 parts of the building with a similar configuration to the connection between prefabricated and in-situ poured concrete that was damaged on Level 10. Two of these areas, both on Level four, show evidence of some but lesser damage.”

The firm said some residents could begin a “progressive reoccupation” of the block.

“Units that are in the vicinity of required repairs, or are obstructed by propping, will not be able to be occupied until repairs are complete,” WSP said in a statement.

The teams investigating the structure are from Rincovitch and Kajima Corporation, appointed by Icon, the Opal Tower’s builders, while the tower’s body corporate has also hired engineering firm Cardno.

The NSW government has appointed two experts — UNSW’s Professor Mark Hoffman and Newcastle University’s Professor John Carter — to investigate the situation.

About 300 people have been forced to change hotels and other places to spend New Year’s Eve, as the accommodation they had initially booked were already full.

Meanwhile, the national body representing surveyors and certifiers has accused a NSW minister of politicising the Opal Tower debacle and the plight of the tower’s residents to unfairly target their industry and score political points.

Better Regulations Minister Matt Kean said he has been trying to clean up the private certification industry, which was created by Labor 20 years ago and has led to “cowboys and shonks who have cast a shadow on the entire profession”.

Mr Kean and Planning Minister Anthony Roberts said they plan to audit 25 to 30 per cent of certifiers each year. Troy Olds, national president of the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors, today described Mr Kean’s comments as “a shameful misuse of the Opal Tower situation to suit a grandstanding agenda”.

“The Minister is using the Opal Tower scenario to grandstand and appear to be doing something useful when nothing he has announced so far will protect the public of NSW or address the systemic issues in the building industry. If the Minister really wants to achieve better consumer protection, this is not the way to go about it,” he said.

Mr Kean today said the audit he announced on Sunday was part of a broad — and pre-existing — policy aimed at “cleaning up the certification industry”.