Local authorities are increasing their inspections and ordering removal of flammable ACM cladding from apartment buildings. This signage-grade PE-cored version of ACM is not suitable for building exterior architectural use.
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| Australia’s first and worst ACM panel-induced apartment block fire at Melbourne’s Lacrosse Tower in 2014. Photo: Greg Badrock of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. |
The latest is the ‘Elysium’ luxury apartment building in Gordon, Sydney in Ku-Ring-Gai Council area. The Strata owners have been given until August 31st to replace the flammable ACM panels with non-combustible materials, which have already been ordered. The Elysium was completed only in 2010.
In Sydney alone, over 435 building have been identified as ‘at high risk’ by a state government task force. If builders and developers can not be held responsible for remediation work within the six-year ‘major fault’ rules; strata owners can be faced with a $50-$60,000 cost per apartment to remove flammable cladding and replace with fire-safe ACM material. Owners of one apartment building in Pyrmont are facing a $7 million total bill, and fines if not completed by the set date.
In Melbourne, the problem is worse and there have been two fires there that accelerated because of flammable ACM panelling. With the first one in 2014, in South Melbourne’s Lacrosse building, the owners of the 328 apartments launched legal action to recoup an estimated $10.7 million in recladding costs, $1 million in lost rent and emergency accommodation costs and over $500,000 in insurance premium hikes.
With strata owners being left to foot the bills, class actions are inevitable, and one is already in progress through lawyers IMF Benton. Governments have been weak in holding inspectors, developers and builders to account and instead, as usual, are tending to make Joe and Jane public suffer for the errors – or deliberate actions – of those responsible. Manufacturers and importers of ACM have also been targeted, although how a successful action can be bought against a company lawfully making a product for the sign industry, only for it to be mis-used architecturally, is hard to fathom.
The Lacrosse owners’ tribunal seeking to sue eight parties including builder, architect, surveyors and fire inspectors, featured 17 barristers and solicitors at the bar table, and at least as many lawyers for various parties investigating from the public gallery. With another 100 or so cases likely in Victoria, the potential costs are unimaginable.
All because of one thing – not using the proper non-combustible grades of ACM for architectural facades.
- Andy McCourt
