Strata Building Defects Typologies Overviewed

What are the typical kinds of defects faced by strata buildings and owners …

Since strata building defects have been commonplace for a long time we should be able to know the types [and frequency] of them occurring with fairly high certainty. But, as this article highlights, there’s a surprising lack of information available and most of it has limited cross applicability.

[10.0 minutes estimated reading time, 1963 words]

Introduction

You would think that after almost 60 years of strata buildings being created in Australia with significant levels of building defects we’d have a bank of knowledge about the typical kinds of defects that occur, the frequency of each type, the factors that are likely to indicate there are or will be defects in a strata building, and, a range of settled ways for dealing with each type of defect.

Well, you’d be wrong.

In fact, there’s almost no publicly available information or data about strata building defect types and what has been published is of limited application [no criticism intended].

So, in this article, I’m overviewing what we know from formal and informal sources, why we’re in this situation, and what could be done about it.

Formal research

There have been 2 serious research efforts into strata building defects in Australia which I overview here.

In 2009, the UNSW City Futures Research Centre produced the report ‘Managing Major Repairs in Residential Strata Developments in New South Wales’ which included some findings about common strata building defect types based on 247 completed surveys as follows.

City Futures Research Centre Identified Defect Types

Water ingress

Water leaks in internal areas

Defective services (e.g. broken lifts or air-conditioning units)

Defective or inappropriate design of balconies or balustrades

Guttering faults

Electrical faults

Building movement

Cracking to internal and external structures

Tiling problems

Various defects caused by the use of inappropriate building materials

Poor fire and safety compliance.

These defect types are limited and constrained by the open survey question structure so they follow the classifications made by responders.  As a result, they are probably too general to be very useful beyond verifying these categories and as a starting point for more categorisation.

In 2018 Deakin University produced the report ‘An Examination of Building Defects in Residential Multi-owned Properties’ which also included an analysis of typical strata building defect types based on 212 expert reports prepared for strata building defect claims [covering 3227 line-item defects] and 11 stakeholder interviews as follows.

They identified 13 building element categories as listed below and each with multiple subcategories as set out in the table [which you can also view here].

Deakin Identified Defect Types

Access & Egress

Building Fabric & Cladding

Electrical, Lighting & Data

Fire Protection

Hydraulics

Motion Equipment

Mechanical & Ventilation

Roof & Rainwater

Safety

Structural

Utility Supply

Waterproofing

Non-essential Services

The list is quite extensive and includes some surprising items like non-compliant tactile indicators on stair approaches.

The Deakin University research also referenced the two further non-strata-related research papers about building defects that have developed typologies for defects as follows.

Jim Georgiou in ‘Verification of a building defect classification system for housing’ (2010) 28(5) Structural Survey 370, 371, developed a classification system consists of 35 building elements and 12 building defect types including:

cracking, damp, drainage, external leaks, incomplete, internal leaks, miscellaneous, regulations, structure adequacy, water hammer, window sill gap, and workmanship

Marcel Macarulla and his cohort in ‘Standardizing Housing Defects: Classification, Validation, and Benefits’ (2013) 139(8) Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 968, identified different approaches to classifying housing defects – by severity, by construction stage, by type and by cause and 15 categories of building defects were developed including:

affected functionality, inappropriate installation, biological action and change, broken/deteriorated, chemical action and change, detachment, soiled, flatness and levelness, misaligned, missing, stability/movement, surface appearance, water problems, and tolerance errors

Limited access to information sources

A key reason for the strata building defects information and data shortage is the lack of reliable and accessible information sources.

Since each strata building works independently [with their custom team of advisors] on their building defects, information about their building defects is siloed in their strata records and others’ private files.

The third-party files and records [held by lawyers, consultants, strata managers, courts and tribunals, arbitrators, etc] are also kept separate from each other and, are then archived and become long forgotten a short time after their work on the strata building defects ends.

So, the information and data about all these strata building defects are locked away in mini vaults that will never get re-opened.

Plus, most of the strata building defects information and data are in non-digitised formats [such as paper, MS Word, MS Excel, and/or, PDF] so even if it were accessible it would require extensive manual review, sorting, and re-inputting to be usable in any cost-effective way. 

A propensity to keep strata building defects secret

Additionally, there’s a lot of reasons [good and bad] why information and data about strata building defects are kept secret.

Firstly, the lawyers representing strata buildings have strict client confidentiality obligations that prevent the disclosure of information and documents relating to their legal work; so their files will almost never become available.  That’s a shame as the lawyers probably have the most complete and well organised sources of that information.

Secondly, consultants, experts, and other advisors will have [at least] contractual obligations to not release their records and work product without strata building approval.  So, that material and information will also remain largely unavailable.  The only way Deakin could get access to Partridge Partners reports was because it was a university and under strict rules about their use and anonymisation.

Thirdly, where there are legal actions, the materials held in Tribunal and Court files are inaccessible, except to the parties.

Fourthly, whilst strata managers and owners corporations must the strata records available for inspection and copying to strata owners and other authorised people. it’s very unlikely that such authorisations can be organised on a large enough scale to effectively access the building defect information and materials.  Plus, that exercise would involve significant costs for inspection fees, copying, and labour.

Fifthly, if a strata building defect claims are settled it’s usually on the basis of nondisclosure or confidentiality obligations that further mitigate against accessing the details of the building defects, the claims, and the outcomes.

Sixthly, the builders and developers have no commercial interest or other incentives to make information about strata building defects available:

• before and during defect claims are active, as it can only make their position worse and the strata building’s better, or

• after defects claims are finalised, as there’s the cost to doing so, there’s no commercial benefit to doing so, and, in some cases due to non-disclosure obligations in settlements.

That’s also a shame as the builder and developer also have complete, technically detailed, and well-organised sources of that information.

And, finally, it’s often perceived by many strata stakeholders that it is against the strata buildings’ and strata owners’ best commercial interests [in relation to property values] to disclose the existence of building defects and/or any claims or legal actions in relation to them.  So, there’s a propensity by strata committees, managers, and others to keep that very hush-hush.  

Lack of a uniform approach on defect identification

Even the limited research results I’ve highlighted earlier in this article demonstrates that there’s no uniformity in strata building defect information that has been analysed by the researchers. 

That’s also likely to be the case for all the missing strata building defects information since it has all been created individually for specific buildings by many different people over a long period of time.  So, the format and content will be highly variable. 

Most of the data in the Deakin University research came from reports produced by one expert consultant group [Partridge Partners] and, despite that, it was still quite inconsistent and required extensive re-interpretation and categorisation.  So, imagine how differently thousands of experts have recorded, measured, described, and identified strata building defects.

There’s no applicable Australian Standard that applies and no industry group or sector best practice guides about defect investigation, recording, and reporting.

And, since many strata building defects claims involve legal actions, the defect analysis and reporting that gets done will be tailored to different lawyers’ and barristers’ preferences in each case; further exacerbating differences.

All this means that even the information and data that can be accessed is not directly comparable or aggregated.

The multiplicity factor

An interesting feature of the data that’s been analysed and reported about so far and my own experience of strata building defects over the last 25 years is something I call the multiplicity factor.

By that, I mean that since a strata building comprises repeating construction elements and systems [like a balcony on every apartment, one fire entry door per apartment, multiple fire dampers on every level, etc] when a defect arises in one building element it often gets multiplied by the number of times that building element reappears throughout the building.

In the worst affected buildings, the defect can exist everywhere. 

And, in the even more problematic buildings, the cost of checking whether even a small defect does or doesn’t exist everywhere might match or exceed the cost of fixing it.

So, in many cases, minor strata building defects become major because of the times the defect gets repeated in the building.  And, when major or serious strata building defects repeat thought a strata building they become super defects.

As a result, defect typologies may need also a frequency dimension or scale to help determine their severity in strata buildings.

My anecdotal list of strata building defect types

Given the lack of proven or available information or data about strata building defects, I have to resort to anecdotal summaries that are based on my review of thousands of strata building defect claims over the last 25 + years.

So, here’s my simplified list of typical strata building defects categories in order of frequency from my experience.

External Waterproofing – including roof, deck and balcony membranes, planter boxes, façade panel joints, window & glazing flashings, and more

Internal Waterproofing – bathroom floors, shower trays, and perimeter seals

Fire Dampers – location, number & operational faults

Intertenancy Walls – FRL rating non-compliance

External Render – delamination, staining & cracking

Fire Doors - FRL rating non-compliance

Other miscellaneous Fire Safety System non-compliances

External Window & Glazing – water seal failures, setup/hob failures, opening/closing functions

Carpark Waterproofing & Drainage Systems

Concrete Slab Cracking & Expansion Joints

Air Conditioning Systems - ducting & capacity

Tiling Faults – irregularities, lack of or negative falls, grouting issues, etc

Precast & Pretensions Slab Jointing

HVAC – equipment capacity, compliance certification & BMA system operation

Groundwater & Stormwater Drainage Systems

Foundations – subsidence issues

Power Supply Systems – compliance & capacity shortages

Car Park Stacker Systems - operational faults

Combustible Cladding

Telecommunications – capacity shortages

Each category contains a myriad of construction sins, but you get the picture about the extent of strata building defects.

The need for data and analysis

This cursory analysis of the current state of reliable and widespread information and data about the types and frequency of strata building defects reveals serious deficiencies that need addressing.

Without such data, it’s like every strata building’s defects experience is groundhog day, with stakeholders starting from scratch to identify, document, investigate, explain and rectify building defects like they are new and unique when, in fact, they’ve occurred in tens of thousands of strata building before.

So, we need more information collected, organised, published, and studied to discern patterns, trends, insights, solutions and to create tools that address strata buildings defects issues now, and, in the future. 

I’m talking about a data-driven approach to strata building defects so that problems and claims are more predictable, easier to justify [or not], and more quickly [and cheaply] resolved.

Is anyone doing that? 

Is it easy?

Is it time-consuming and costly?

Is it worth it?

What do you think ….

June 03, 2021

Francesco …