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Fascinating post by a structural engineer who actually inspected projects by this firm is over in the reddit discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/commen

by _fs 8y ago

Fascinating post by a structural engineer who actually inspected projects by this firm is over in the reddit discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_structural_damage_sydney_olympic_park/ecg3tpz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_s...

rwmj 8y ago
A comment by someone in an adjacent building who heard the cracking sounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_structural_damage_sydney_olympic_park/ecfzjwf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_s...
- currysausage 8y ago
  "i kept hearing sounds every half a minute" - So there should be a recording available somewhere, possibly on social media?
stefan_ 8y ago
Feels like I could write the exact same post about software engineering. Some party apply directly (copy-paste with some crucial yet infinitesimal differences).
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I've lived in a Meriton apartment complex in Sydney. It was one of the complexes built right in the biggest part of the boom, when they were rolling out "largest development in Sydney/Australia" one after the other, trying to outdo themselves and each other. We moved in (renting) when it was brand new, peeling the plastic off the appliances etc. Within 1 year they were doing MAJOR fixes to building-scale defects in the construction, and within 2-3 years we had cracks in the walls, paint flaking off, doors that didn't line up, windows that didn't seal when closed. This is on a ~8th level apartment, and these aren't cheap apartments. They're not luxury, but they're comfortable in the "mid-to-high" end of the Sydney scale, just on the edge of the CBD. We since moved out of Sydney, but we'll never live in a new-build Apartment again. The hell we went through, just as a renter in those few years, was mind boggling. Giving engineers and tradies access to our apartment seemingly every week, sometimes every day for days on end, so they could inspect and fix issues. I can't even imagine how bad it is for people who got suckered/conned into buying those POS apartments.
- baylisscg 8y ago
  My experience of equivalent buildings in Melbourne matches up. Leaks and cracks all over the place. All these building seem to be built out of prefabbed concrete panels in a hurry. Bonus points if it's also covered in a flammable cladding.
  - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
    Yeah we moved from Sydney highrise hell directly into Melbourne highrise hell (we thought Melbourne might be better... Oops) and received a flooded 10th floor apartment in a 1 year old highrise because they "forgot" to seal where the wall concrete meets the floor concrete, and an exterior ledge pooled water until it seeped through the cracks and flooded our apartment. Multiple weeks with 2 adults and 2 kids and all our belongings in the single dry room while they stripped the inside and outside of our apartment to bare concrete, sealed it all, and rebuilt all the interior, drywall, carpets, etc. Because we rented, we received no compensation or assistance. Yay Victorian tenants rights (or lack thereof). We're now in a 30yr old double brick house (with all new high quality interior) in a rural city and never been happier. We'll never live in an apartment or major Australian city again.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Meriton is extremely well connected politically. NSW (the state Sydney is in) has always had a problem with corruption stretching back to the Rum Rebellion [0]. If you are thinking of buying a new apartment in Sydney then just walk away, if the developer is Meriton then run. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    Connected politically or not means squat if you build a structure that collapses killing hundreds of people. At least I hope that is the case in any place under rule of law. Of course I would hate to see any kind of building failure that causes mass casualty. But are the execs of Meriton aware of such possibility? I am reminded of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul, Korea. This happened in 1995. This was a very high end department store from what I heard. I know acquaintances who know of a family that lost multiple family members. The family that owned the building was one of those chae-bul family in S. Korea with multiple business interests. I believe in top 50 at the time or something like it. So yes they were politically connected. But because of the catastrophic failure of the building with mass casualty, the family's entire holding was liquidated to pay for compensation to the victims' families. And the owner/owner's son both served lengthy prison terms. Edit: While reading up on Sampoong incident, I learned the owner wanted original construction firm to take shortcuts to reduce cost, but they refused. So the owner fired the firm and started HIS OWN construction firm to build the building. At least someone had a backbone, stuck to what was right, and lost a big job/contract, but was proved to be in the right. I bet someone at the original construction firm let out a huge sigh of relief later.
gtvwill 8y ago
Reading that post and having worked in various contractor roles in construction in Sydney over the last 5 or so years (concreting and general construction) none of what he is saying surprises me at all! I came from construction out in the mines so OH&S and engineering inspections were quite literally our daily jam, moving to the construction industry for residential/commercial in Sydney I was blown away by what I saw! We would quite literally have days where the site would be filled with teams of workers brought in on buses, mixtures of migrants from eastern europe (like bulk euro's) and parts of asia who would be PUMPING out the welding, concreting and general construction. The site would literally be buzzing with activity...then you would rock up the next day and the place would be near empty...jobs half done all over the place. Sometime during the empty days...the inspections would happen, be they OH&S or engineering or whoever else had to suss shit out to tick some boxes. Point is, they would actively pull guys off site because these teams were dodgy as shit at working, I spent my days regularly just counting the OH&S breaches I witnessed. Hell I even called the asbestos investigation team on a company I worked for because the breaches were just too ridiculous for me to handle...nothing happened. Kents are still making their workers rip out asbestos with no protective gear and making a shit ton in profit because they dump it using businesses that dump it illegally. These are MBA registered businesses too, and don't even begin to think the MBA doesn't know this shit goes on regularly, its a large portion of their members participating in these acts. They are dodgy as hell. /rant
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Unfortunately this all matches the stories my friends tell me :( For our US friends MBA is the Master Builders Assoiciation [0], not people with a Masters of Business Administration. 0. http://www.mbansw.asn.au/About/ http://www.mbansw.asn.au/About/
- EricE 8y ago
  It happens in the US too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harmon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harmon At least they caught it before it was fully constructed, but it still cost almost as much to tear it down as it did to build!
  - 8y ago
scarejunba 8y ago
I wonder about the human effects of safety engineering. Say you require a 10x margin because you know builders will dilute it to 5x undetectably (say it’s under layers of other material or something). Every time you attempt to compensate for the dilution of the standard in practice, they’ll undo it. But if you stop, they may continue increasing the dilution. There’s a normalization of deviance. And indeed most buildings will still stand because the standard is attempting to handle six nines so everyone involved building will probably ever build something that fails even if they diluted it to five nines. How do you encourage not doing that? Enforcement is one angle but are there others? Force the buyers to have insurance and then let the insurance company eat the risk assessment?
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > But if you stop, they may continue increasing the dilution. There’s a normalization of deviance. For a very good explanation of the mechanism that causes this kind of normalization of deviance, I recommend Richard Cook's outstanding talk "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
- manicdee 8y ago
  Well one option is to hold designers, developers, builders and inspectors separately liable for the work and inspections they do for their entire lives, not limited to the period of solvency of the company they did the work for. We’ll see a return to very conservative designs though, with no 100 storey skyscrapers until they find people actually willing to pay for and perform good work. Until we are actually sending people bankrupt or jailing them, the corruption will worsen. There has to be some actual penalty for people trying to pass off shonky work.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Does this, in practice, mean quality? The aeroplane industry doesn’t do this and they build safe craft.
    - 8y ago
forgot-my-pw 8y ago
As an engineer, you have a responsibility to try to stop or report projects like these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer

by _fs 8y ago

rwmj 8y ago

A comment by someone in an adjacent building who heard the cracking sounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_structural_damage_sydney_olympic_park/ecfzjwf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/a91wit/opal_tower_s...

currysausage 8y ago
"i kept hearing sounds every half a minute" - So there should be a recording available somewhere, possibly on social media?

stefan_ 8y ago

Feels like I could write the exact same post about software engineering. Some party apply directly (copy-paste with some crucial yet infinitesimal differences).

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago

I've lived in a Meriton apartment complex in Sydney. It was one of the complexes built right in the biggest part of the boom, when they were rolling out "largest development in Sydney/Australia" one after the other, trying to outdo themselves and each other. We moved in (renting) when it was brand new, peeling the plastic off the appliances etc. Within 1 year they were doing MAJOR fixes to building-scale defects in the construction, and within 2-3 years we had cracks in the walls, paint flaking off, doors that didn't line up, windows that didn't seal when closed. This is on a ~8th level apartment, and these aren't cheap apartments. They're not luxury, but they're comfortable in the "mid-to-high" end of the Sydney scale, just on the edge of the CBD. We since moved out of Sydney, but we'll never live in a new-build Apartment again. The hell we went through, just as a renter in those few years, was mind boggling. Giving engineers and tradies access to our apartment seemingly every week, sometimes every day for days on end, so they could inspect and fix issues. I can't even imagine how bad it is for people who got suckered/conned into buying those POS apartments.

baylisscg 8y ago
My experience of equivalent buildings in Melbourne matches up. Leaks and cracks all over the place. All these building seem to be built out of prefabbed concrete panels in a hurry. Bonus points if it's also covered in a flammable cladding.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  Yeah we moved from Sydney highrise hell directly into Melbourne highrise hell (we thought Melbourne might be better... Oops) and received a flooded 10th floor apartment in a 1 year old highrise because they "forgot" to seal where the wall concrete meets the floor concrete, and an exterior ledge pooled water until it seeped through the cracks and flooded our apartment. Multiple weeks with 2 adults and 2 kids and all our belongings in the single dry room while they stripped the inside and outside of our apartment to bare concrete, sealed it all, and rebuilt all the interior, drywall, carpets, etc. Because we rented, we received no compensation or assistance. Yay Victorian tenants rights (or lack thereof). We're now in a 30yr old double brick house (with all new high quality interior) in a rural city and never been happier. We'll never live in an apartment or major Australian city again.
danieltillett 8y ago
Meriton is extremely well connected politically. NSW (the state Sydney is in) has always had a problem with corruption stretching back to the Rum Rebellion [0]. If you are thinking of buying a new apartment in Sydney then just walk away, if the developer is Meriton then run. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion
- dba7dba 8y ago
  Connected politically or not means squat if you build a structure that collapses killing hundreds of people. At least I hope that is the case in any place under rule of law. Of course I would hate to see any kind of building failure that causes mass casualty. But are the execs of Meriton aware of such possibility? I am reminded of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul, Korea. This happened in 1995. This was a very high end department store from what I heard. I know acquaintances who know of a family that lost multiple family members. The family that owned the building was one of those chae-bul family in S. Korea with multiple business interests. I believe in top 50 at the time or something like it. So yes they were politically connected. But because of the catastrophic failure of the building with mass casualty, the family's entire holding was liquidated to pay for compensation to the victims' families. And the owner/owner's son both served lengthy prison terms. Edit: While reading up on Sampoong incident, I learned the owner wanted original construction firm to take shortcuts to reduce cost, but they refused. So the owner fired the firm and started HIS OWN construction firm to build the building. At least someone had a backbone, stuck to what was right, and lost a big job/contract, but was proved to be in the right. I bet someone at the original construction firm let out a huge sigh of relief later.

gtvwill 8y ago

Reading that post and having worked in various contractor roles in construction in Sydney over the last 5 or so years (concreting and general construction) none of what he is saying surprises me at all! I came from construction out in the mines so OH&S and engineering inspections were quite literally our daily jam, moving to the construction industry for residential/commercial in Sydney I was blown away by what I saw! We would quite literally have days where the site would be filled with teams of workers brought in on buses, mixtures of migrants from eastern europe (like bulk euro's) and parts of asia who would be PUMPING out the welding, concreting and general construction. The site would literally be buzzing with activity...then you would rock up the next day and the place would be near empty...jobs half done all over the place. Sometime during the empty days...the inspections would happen, be they OH&S or engineering or whoever else had to suss shit out to tick some boxes. Point is, they would actively pull guys off site because these teams were dodgy as shit at working, I spent my days regularly just counting the OH&S breaches I witnessed. Hell I even called the asbestos investigation team on a company I worked for because the breaches were just too ridiculous for me to handle...nothing happened. Kents are still making their workers rip out asbestos with no protective gear and making a shit ton in profit because they dump it using businesses that dump it illegally. These are MBA registered businesses too, and don't even begin to think the MBA doesn't know this shit goes on regularly, its a large portion of their members participating in these acts. They are dodgy as hell. /rant

danieltillett 8y ago
Unfortunately this all matches the stories my friends tell me :( For our US friends MBA is the Master Builders Assoiciation [0], not people with a Masters of Business Administration. 0. http://www.mbansw.asn.au/About/ http://www.mbansw.asn.au/About/
EricE 8y ago
It happens in the US too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harmon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harmon At least they caught it before it was fully constructed, but it still cost almost as much to tear it down as it did to build!
- 8y ago

scarejunba 8y ago

I wonder about the human effects of safety engineering. Say you require a 10x margin because you know builders will dilute it to 5x undetectably (say it’s under layers of other material or something). Every time you attempt to compensate for the dilution of the standard in practice, they’ll undo it. But if you stop, they may continue increasing the dilution. There’s a normalization of deviance. And indeed most buildings will still stand because the standard is attempting to handle six nines so everyone involved building will probably ever build something that fails even if they diluted it to five nines. How do you encourage not doing that? Enforcement is one angle but are there others? Force the buyers to have insurance and then let the insurance company eat the risk assessment?

pdkl95 8y ago
> But if you stop, they may continue increasing the dilution. There’s a normalization of deviance. For a very good explanation of the mechanism that causes this kind of normalization of deviance, I recommend Richard Cook's outstanding talk "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
manicdee 8y ago
Well one option is to hold designers, developers, builders and inspectors separately liable for the work and inspections they do for their entire lives, not limited to the period of solvency of the company they did the work for. We’ll see a return to very conservative designs though, with no 100 storey skyscrapers until they find people actually willing to pay for and perform good work. Until we are actually sending people bankrupt or jailing them, the corruption will worsen. There has to be some actual penalty for people trying to pass off shonky work.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Does this, in practice, mean quality? The aeroplane industry doesn’t do this and they build safe craft.
  - 8y ago

forgot-my-pw 8y ago

As an engineer, you have a responsibility to try to stop or report projects like these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer