David Chandler on Lifting the 2021 Building Game Standards in NSW

After months of waiting, Building Commissioner David Chandler has finally arrived to announce his plan of lifting building game standards in NSW. When the Building Commissioner David Chandler started to stride into the apartment complex courtyard, the murmur shivered through the assembled horde.

Everyone rose to their feet to greet him as if in the royalty’s presence. As he greeted everyone, all jostle to shake his hand. He was interested to see what has been happening there.

After a run of the scandalous building fails, including Mascot Towers’ leaning, cracking in Opal Tower, and combustible cladding slathered over many apartment building facades, the NSW government decided to assign a building commissioner. However, no one believed that doing such would give much change.

The scepticism increased with the appointment of a new fellow of Western Sydney University to the role. Even though David Chandler was granted incredible powers six months ago to shut down sites where he wasn’t satisfied with the standards, everyone expected Clark Kent.

Currently, Mr. Chandler has issued orders on about 1000 apartments in 19 developments to repair or suspend work and deny them occupation certificates. Problems range from structural issues with facades, too-small lift wells, inadequate waterproofing, and shoddy workmanship to the severe defects in a 16-storey tower in Auburn.

George Tadrosse, CEO of Aland, stated it’s great that he weeded out several bottom ends of the market, building 1400 apartments across ten stages at Schofield’s site, which passed their audit almost a month before.

The development market is quite small, with around 30 players, 10 fly-by-nighters, 10 middle-range, and 10 tier-one developers. He’s putting a lot of pressure on these, which is good as it’s the only way to lift standards and bring trust back into the market.

There are now calls for similar commissioners with similar powers to be assigned in other states, too. Kathlyn Loseby, President of the NSW chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects, said that Sydney and Melbourne have had significant disasters, but it would be good to have consistent construction standards across all states. These were agreed by Chris Duggan, president at strata managers’ body Strata Community Association (NSW).

Mr. David Chandler said that the government could have brought in a bureaucrat, but he’s someone who’ll make meaningful reforms that will benefit all customers. He believes he’s leading transformational change in the sector and introduced initiatives that everyone would like to see rolled out in all states.

Mr. Chandler isn’t shy about calling out abt wrong-doing that he notices, as he sets out on his goal of 100 audits annually. It’s really worrying that there are several jobs where he can’t believe they have the people running their projects. He added that it’s also a disgrace how some are misusing the products.

Facades and bathrooms are Mr. David Chandler’s main concerns as these often have the most critical problems. There’s a lot of panic in the industry when David Chandler is doing inspections. Since he was given the authority, a lot has changed.

Before Mr. Chandler finished his appointment, Mr. Tadrosse looked pleased to him. He noticed how fairly incredible his powers were and how he was ready to use them. 

Mr. David Chandler is fearless to take no prisoners. He insists that everyone needs a tune-up and that everyone should be on their toes. He pushes everyone to lift the game and to do something better. 

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