Pub­li­ca­tions

Sep 3, 2024

What are you actu­al­ly buy­ing into when you buy a Stra­ta Unit?

It is impor­tant to under­stand what you are respon­si­ble for and what you actu­al­ly own when look­ing at buy­ing into stra­ta. You might be surprised.Usu­al­ly, when pur­chas­ing an indi­vid­ual lot in a stra­ta scheme, you are only buy­ing the air­space of a lot, the inter­nal sur­faces of walls, floors, ceil­ings includ­ing inter­nal walls…

Jul 23, 2024

Statu­to­ry Duty of Care – Part 4 Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020 – ‘…the risk of harm was fore­see­able… not insignificant…not far-fetched or fanciful’

On 5 July 2024, His Hon­our Jus­tice Waugh hand­ed down his deci­sion in The Own­ers – Stra­ta Plan 80867 v Da Sil­va [2024] NSWDC 263.Swaab, instruct­ing William Mar­shall of 7 Went­worth Sel­borne Cham­bers, act­ed for the Plain­tiff Own­ers Cor­po­ra­tion in the pro­ceed­ings, which were brought against Mr Da Sil­va (the Builder). The Builder…

Jul 11, 2023

Alert | Con­struc­tion indus­try update: When is reme­di­al build­ing work exempt devel­op­ment? 11 July 2023

The Depart­ment of Plan­ning and Envi­ron­ment has pub­lished a ​‘Reme­di­al Build­ing Work – State Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning Pol­i­cy (Exempt and Com­ply­ing Devel­op­ment Codes) 2008’ Fact Sheet (Fact Sheet) to pro­vide guid­ance as to when reme­di­al build­ing work is con­sid­ered exempt devel­op­ment under the Exempt and Com­ply­ing Devel­op­ment (Codes SEPP): https://​www​.plan​ning​.nsw​.gov​.au/​s​i​t​e​s​/​d​e​f​a​u​l​t​/​f​i​l​e​s​/2023 –…

Mar 13, 2023

NSW Con­struc­tion Update

Roberts v Good­win Street Devel­op­ments Pty Ltd [2023] NSW­CA 5 In a recent deci­sion hand­ed down by the NSW Court of Appeal it has been con­firmed that the duty of care pro­vi­sions intro­duced under Part 4 of the Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020 (NSW) (DBP Act) on 10 June 2020, in par­tic­u­lar a claim…

Mar 1, 2023

Stra­ta Reme­di­al Update: Emer­gency Reme­di­al Build­ing Works

The NSW Depart­ment of Cus­tomer Ser­vice has released a Fact Sheet: Emer­gency Reme­di­al Build­ing Work: https://​www​.fair​trad​ing​.nsw​.gov​.au/​t​r​a​d​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​e​s​/​c​o​n​s​t​r​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​a​n​d​-​t​r​a​d​e​-​e​s​s​e​n​t​i​a​l​s​/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​o​n​-​c​l​a​s​s​-​2​-​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​s​/​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-​p​r​a​c​t​i​t​i​o​n​e​r​-​o​b​l​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​e​m​e​r​g​e​n​c​y​-​r​e​m​e​d​i​a​l​-​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-work This Fact Sheet has been pre­pared as a guide­line to assist own­ers cor­po­ra­tions, stra­ta man­agers and design and build­ing prac­ti­tion­ers in respect of reme­di­al emer­gency build­ing works in exist­ing class 2 buildings. The ongo­ing con­struc­tion reform in…

Feb 10, 2023

Shift­ing the dial on build­ing defects lia­bil­i­ty – a greater risk for com­pa­ny direc­tors and devel­op­ers under recent leg­isla­tive reform

Under the Home Build­ing Act 1989, claimants in defec­tive build­ing cas­es against cor­po­rate builders and/​or cor­po­rate devel­op­ers may hit a road­block in the case of ulti­mate insol­ven­cy of those par­ties even if the claims are suc­cess­ful and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion or dam­ages orders are made in respect of the defects.  Has this now changed…

Jul 25, 2022

Reme­di­al Works Are Dif­fer­ent | NSW Con­struc­tion Reform

The real­i­ty of the NSW Con­struc­tion reform for the reme­di­al industry Reme­di­al is an inte­gral part of the con­struc­tion industry. Twelve months down the road, after the com­mence­ment of new design com­pli­ance require­ments under the Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020 (DBPA) and the accom­pa­ny­ing reg­u­la­tions (DBPR) on 1 July 2021, the reme­di­al…

Jun 17, 2022

The evo­lu­tion of a legal team, intro­duc­ing Swaab’s team ser­vic­ing the prop­er­ty industry

The pace of trans­for­ma­tion, increased vol­ume and com­plex­i­ty of projects has con­tin­ued unabat­ed with­in the prop­er­ty sec­tor. As one of the fir­m’s fastest grow­ing teams, our team ser­vic­ing the prop­er­ty indus­try has seen a grow­ing demand over the past 24-months across the full spec­trum of prop­er­ty services. Diver­si­fi­ca­tion and the intro­duc­tion of…

Feb 22, 2021

Helen Kowal’s arti­cle pub­lished in Source​able​.net | Final­ly, Bet­ter Build­ing Prac­tices are Being Enforced

Back in 2019, frus­trat­ed in my pro­fes­sion as to how many build­ing defects appear in mul­ti-storey res­i­den­tial build­ings short­ly after con­struc­tion lead­ing to mul­ti-mil­lions of dol­lars being spent on reme­di­al repairs, I spent the year inter­view­ing expert build­ing con­sul­tants as to their views on the state of play in con­struc­tion and…

Aug 31, 2020

NSW Con­struc­tion Indus­try Reform

The NSW Build­ing Com­mis­sion­er, David Chan­dler OAM, is at the ready with ​‘boots on the ground’, to ​‘rid the indus­try of dan­ger­ous builders, devel­op­ers and cer­ti­fiers’ and improve con­sumer con­fi­dence in the buy­ing of res­i­den­tial apart­ments in NSW with the com­mence­ment on 1 Sep­tem­ber 2020 of the Res­i­den­tial Apart­ment Build­ings (Com­pli­ance…