Crownview David Chandler

Illawarra Mercury

NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler speaks about the Crownview development in Wollongong.

Transcript

00:00 There's been lots of coverage of this project over the last year and it's likely to continue.

00:07 This project was first identified for an inspection soon after the Rabak powers came into play

00:12 in 2021 and this project was due to complete shortly after that.

00:18 You can see what's happened along the way since, it's really quite alarming.

00:24 First impression of this job was to discover in the basement that three entire floors were

00:29 where plastic formwork had been used, had been improperly filled and the grinders were

00:35 in removing it and setting up to put another layer of reinforcement in to actually compensate

00:41 for the wall that was no longer functional.

00:43 But just a few things to point out, look at the sprinkler pipes covered in cement, look

00:50 at the props not using proprietary pins, really this showed the signs of everything that is

00:57 to follow in this presentation.

01:01 Fire stairs, pump rooms, really bodgy attempts to try and make things right.

01:10 In the early days, this was back in September/October '21, I had hoped that this project had some

01:17 prospect of becoming a serious contender to be remediated but as time goes on it looks

01:23 more challenging as we proceed.

01:26 You can see that each subsequent inspection presented a new set of challenges with shotcrete

01:33 not really working all that well and additional columns being required, substantial back propping,

01:38 the bottom right hand picture actually shows the situation under the fire tank where the

01:44 slab was deemed not strong enough to carry the load.

01:48 Every time we've been back to this building there's been additional strengthening required,

01:52 columns not big enough to carry the loads, additional thickening required on the core,

02:00 services really all over the place and monitoring in place just to see that everything was hanging

02:05 in alright.

02:06 Again you can see here the massive amounts of retrospective remediation in the basement

02:12 that's been required.

02:13 At that particular point in time it was estimated that the cost of those works to date were

02:17 about $15 million and the work continues in the basement.

02:23 In fact this is a more recent photograph just showing how the cracking in the basement slabs

02:28 are being dealt with but more recently the work has moved on to identifying new and unknown

02:34 risks in the tower and you can see here that in fact everywhere there's massive reinforcement

02:39 going on to compensate post-tensioning ducts that have never been filled, inadequate post-tensioning

02:45 and of course the wrong location of shear and bending moment infrastructure.

02:52 Here you can see in the middle, in fact the bottom of this slide, is an attempt to start

02:57 to connect the stairs to the core.

03:00 The entire stairs weren't connected to the core so they're going to have to be retrofitted

03:04 and the props on the left hand side are there just to temporarily hold the load but just

03:10 have a look at the massive amount of exotic reinforcement and cables that are being required

03:19 to be put in here.

03:21 Carbon fibre, quite an exotic attempt to make good and holes everywhere where they've had

03:27 to dig down and actually discover where the post-tensioning was and the fact that it wasn't

03:33 reinforced or it wasn't grouted and you can see that this is what owners who would have

03:40 potentially settled on that building in December '21 would have had to experience in the post-occupation

03:46 phase where you can now see those marks on the carpet identifying where the post-tension

03:51 ducts are underneath the carpet and then having to go underneath the building and repair them.

03:58 More recently we've opened up bathrooms and started to look at what might be there for

04:04 future leaks in the bathroom.

04:05 You can see that in fact the entire tiling arrangements are unsatisfactory and further

04:11 work to be done there.

04:13 Further investigations on the balconies, glass that didn't have code mark on the handrails,

04:20 while it appeared that the threshold arrangements of the door might have been satisfactory when

04:24 you peeled the skin back on the cladding on the balcony you can see that in fact the upturns

04:29 were lower than the balcony which had no overflows on them at all.

04:35 Really this is a nightmare of a project and the Mercury really did cover it quite well

04:42 saying that the challenge here is how will this building ever achieve a situation where

04:47 it can have an occupations certificate and a future building commissioner will be able

04:52 to lift a prohibition order.

04:54 [ Silence ]

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