#24378
Whale
Flatchatter

    John – whilst I agree that a carefully worded and properly considered consent to an Owner’s renovation works by an Executive Committee (E/C) may adequately protect other Residents and the Owners Corporation (O/C) from inconvenience such as noise, and from activities by unlicensed and uninsured people, that’s not “supervision” of the works (and it never can be) and it cannot offer protection from the impacts of incompetency.

    Have you ever tried to have post renovation waterproofing faults rectified in a timely manner and been fobbed-off to a sub-contractor who actually did the work under the license of the prime contractor who was rarely on the job, and then been advised by the NSW Department of Fair Trading that while it issues licenses to tradespeople, that doesn’t always mean that they’re qualified, it doesn’t guarantee that their work will be satisfactory, and that it’s on-line license checking service doesn’t list past insurance claims unless those were accepted/paid by their insurer.

    Well I have, once and in a single storey free-standing property, but that experience was enough for me to realise that the impacts of that same fault in a strata property would be significantly greater, and that despite the best efforts of some E/C’s and Strata Managers problems do still arise from renovations, from waterproofing in particular, and so the NSW Government’s proposal that renovation works by Strata Owners that involve waterproofing of wet areas be canvassed more broadly by the Owners Corporation as a whole as opposed to under delegation by a well-intentioned E/C, that a higher degree of consent be required, and that workers hold a specific waterproofing license and provide a Statement of Compliance (with Standards) are all steps-forward in my opinion.

    If individual E/C’s such as yours (and mine that includes construction professionals) are confident that they can provide the same degree of competency and scrutiny to Owners’ wet area renovation proposals as would >75% of Owners at a General Meeting, then the proposed Legislation provides the ability for such Committees to put a special resolution before its O/C and to seek its concurrence for the Registration of a generic Special By-Law covering the waterproofing of wet areas; thereafter consent to all such proposals could rest with the E/C.