22 JULY 2020
Unit owners have welcomed moves for the return of public certifiers to improve building quality in the ACT, but say architects and engineers also need to be involved in project delivery from start to finish.
Owners Corporation Network ACT president Gary Petherbridge said Mr Ramsay was on the right track with public certifiers for multi-unit developments and developers having to be fit and proper persons to be in business, but architects and engineers should also have to be registered and involved in projects from the drafting of detailed plans to completion.
He said architects were often used to produce ”pretty pictures” for selling the projects and not retained throughout construction. Mr Petherbridge, who began calling for a return to public certifiers a decade ago, said it was better late than never that Mr Ramsay now understood that multi-unit buildings were the issue.
“The developer isn’t going to be the owner when it finishes, there are going to be 600 owners, so they are the ones who need protection,” he said.
Ian Bushnell