Peter Sarlos, architect, chartered surveyor (building) and lawyer, argues most of us are not aware of the regulation and approved insurance systems that are weighted towards the interests of the builder and the home building insurer.
He says sections of the legal profession and the experts who provide expert reports to the courts and tribunals are aware of this bias and take full advantage in the interests of their building clients.
As a result of both the weighting of the regulations and the skill of many advocates operating in the field the decisions of the courts and tribunals are often tainted with the bias towards the industry.
Architecture & Design spoke to Sarlos about what he trying to educate people about and what architects can do to help the cause.
What is it you are trying to educate people on?
Construction of a house or renovations to a house involve the greatest investment most people will make towards their own well-being in their lives.
Failures, errors, ambiguities and the administration of legislation designed to protect the consumer and ensure that contractors are fairly treated in disputes has led to the development of a bias against the consumer in the quality of the housing outcomes in single and multi-dwelling buildings. That results in members of the community being burdened by significant additional costs in the completion of construction, in the ongoing maintenance of construction and in the cost of disputation.
Who are you trying to educate?
It would be more correct to say that I am trying to inform the community involved in residential construction of the issues so that when they make decisions that have such a significant effect on people, they do so with adequate knowledge to make an educated decision. The problems associated with delivering accommodation that is compliant with both sound trade practice and the governing regulation is in part the result of:
• a perception by the community of what is required to build
• a perception by officials and politicians of the causes of the complaints arising from poor quality construction
• a perception by contractors that they are compliant, in terms of their actions and in terms skills, with trade practice and the BCA when in many disputes I have seen they are not
• the published policy of HOWI insurers that their risk is less when a builder is allowed to build without supervision by an architect or building designer, as there are fewer bankruptcies if the builder builds off poor quality and uncontrolled documents than when a builder tenders on a full set of construction documents and/or where he works under the administration of an architect
What can architects do to help?
Architects need to be more directly involved in advocacy to government, in informing the community, in the preparation of legislation and the Australian Standards and in direct advocacy to the public. Archicentre in its earlier forms attempted to do this with what many architects thought was some measure of success – in its present form that appears to have been lost.
For Archicentre to be structured to achieve such a role it would need to be restructured to function as the small practice advocate to address small practice issues and to act as the professions advocate into the residential market and the related institutions. It has the capacity (as Queensland Archicentre has shown) of establishing a relationship with the HIA and the MBA, but in recent times has not been allowed the resources to develop those relationships.
Are architects doing what they can to help this enough?
The answer is no! The profession has increasingly withdrawn into itself and is continually involved in trying to establish a place for itself in the industry structures that exist today.
It is encouraged to do this by the attitudes of large practices, by the harsh administrative practices of the Architects Registration Board (NSW) and by the fear engendering advice of PII insurers, despite the reality that by comparison, with other sectors of the industry and with other professions, few architects are sued in the courts and there are relatively few disciplinary actions that are considered by the ARB and presumably elsewhere in Australia.
What would you like to see happen from a government and an industry perspective?
My objectives are to:
• increase public awareness of what the public has a right to expect from building a home or a home unit
• facilitate the resourcing of small practices in the services to be provided through mentoring and a targeted CPD program
• establishing a method of the responsibility of draftsmen, designers and architects in the correctness and completeness of their documentation and the public in what to expect form construction documents and the ramifications if the documents do not meet an acceptable standard
• establishing a method of the responsibility of contractors in ensuring that the documents that they accept are adequate for building thereby minimising the need for the contractor to make decisions outside their skills base
• to modify the structure of industry administration organisations to provide an ability to minimise or eliminate the bias in the administration
• to facilitate a more equitable approach in the building industry judicial system (as is currently beginning achieved in the NSW Land and Environment Court) through the advocacy of members of the NSW Practice Committee
• reducing, if possible, the complexity of legislation and ambiguity of the regulations
