Another big apartment block problem…handled badly

Charles Street apartment tower in Canterbury under threat of evacuation after collapse warnings

You will have read how a 6 year old Toplace apartment building has gone to the media with a 273 page engineers report and letters sent to owners asking them to vacate a six year old building.

Obviously very poor building work was found here and there is nothing we can do on this forum about that.

But having experience with many of the parties in this matter this is an example of how not to react.

1. Never go to the media first, it places an everlasting stigma on the building that even if the building is fixed will devalue it forever.
2. By going to the media you will lose the chance of having the best strata managers managing your building. Our company will not quote on buildings that are in the public eye, if a building is that far gone they need an hourly charge rate as we could be swamped with 40-50 hours a month of unnecessary time wasting, that is nothing to do with building management.
3. If an engineer gives your building a death sentence (evacuation notice) get a second opinion of the report you received. Some engineers are renowned for calling for the demolition of buildings and evacuation of occupants when some works need to be done. If you have read the above story you will note that the governments engineers and the building commissioner did not agree with the first engineers report regarding the evacuation.

These are some obvious mistakes that this building has made, based on knowledge of the parties involved, reading the news and my 40 plus years experience in the industry. They would have been better off calling David Chandler, another engineer and experts needed without the media attention in the first instance. Then engaging a lawyer to act to have necessary works done by the builder.