WA building supervisor cops $40k fine for negligence on residential construction
Repairs to the properties will reportedly cost millions.
Muhammad Salman has been fined $40,000 and stripped of his building practitioner registration after admitting to several instances of negligence or failure to ensure proper management and supervision of building services at properties located at Beckenham and North Coogee.
In commenting on the proceedings, Western Australia’s Building Commissioner Saj Abdoolakhan welcomed the significant penalty and registration cancellation.
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“These projects resulted in 23 disciplinary matters, many with multiple components. This is unacceptable conduct from a nominated supervisor expected to diligently oversee the construction of new homes for these two families. Instead, he showed complete disregard for safety, compliance, and his clients,” Abdoolakhan stated.
Within the investigation conducted on Salman’s previous role as the nominated supervisor of the recently liquidated Kulowall Construction Pty Ltd, trading as Opus Homes, several concerns related to “workmanship and oversight” were highlighted around two homes that were supervised by Salman.
During the mediation process at the State Administrative Tribunal, Salman admitted to “14 instances of negligence or failure to ensure proper management and supervision of building services under his responsibility at the Beckenham home”, with the Building and Energy division identifying more than 45 total breaches of the Australian Standards and building plans at the property in total.
These disciplinary matters involved “not identifying and rectifying structural issues, defects, poor workmanship”, with these structural issues described as affecting key areas such as the “walls, beams, brickwork and alfresco components” of the house.
Salman was further detailed to have reportedly “relied on the home owner’s husband for many of his nominated supervisor duties”, permitted an unregistered painter to carry out work which required registration, and authorised modifications to the Beckenham house that were not in accordance with the plans approved by the City of Gosnells.
The agreed facts reached at the Tribunal also evidenced that the former nominated supervisor was also “negligent in connection with building services at the North Coogee home”, with more than 60 breaches of the Australian Standards and building plans being identified at the property.
Among these transgressions, Salman was described as having failed to identify and rectify various structural issues within the properties, and in the process also neglected his required duty to rectify the “poor workmanship and discrepancies between (the) approved plans and the actual building work at North Coogee”.
Notably, Salman also failed to ensure that appropriate materials were used in some of the properties’ structural components such as its “brick wall ties and roof beams”, with another decision handed down by the Tribunal last year revealing that “rectification of issues at the North Coogee property would cost more than $1.1 million”.
Abdoolakhan declared “with registration comes responsibility and this outcome should put unscrupulous building industry participants on notice”.
“Although the home owners were able to access home indemnity insurance after the building contractor’s insolvency, they have obviously faced significant financial and emotional impacts from these poorly managed projects,” he concluded.