Eight ideas that could save your building a fortune

This isn't a sales pitch. It's a structured explanation of why the system works against owners, and a practical toolkit you can take back to your next committee meeting.

1. The Pattern: How New Zealand's leaky homes crisis and Vancouver's leaky condo crisis followed an identical script — genuine defects, genuine legislation, and a ready group of professionals who charged owners far more than their buildings needed.
2. The Business Model: Why the standard arrangement of one consultant writing the condition report, designing the scope, and project managing the works is structurally conflicted — and why it leads to biased outcomes.
3. The 10-to-1 Rule: Why buildings that receive proper diagnostic testing before any scope is written cost about one tenth of those that don't — and why that diagnostic step is the one most commonly skipped.
4. The DBP Act Reality: What the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (NSW) actually requires — and what it does not. The Act is being misread to justify complete strip-outs where targeted repairs would achieve the same outcome.
5. The Scientific Method: A seven-step framework used in every serious technical field worldwide, but rarely applied to strata remediation. You'll leave knowing what each step is and the questions to ask your consultant.
6. The Questions to Ask: Before you accept any scope of work or approve any special levy, you are entitled to ask specific questions. We'll give you those questions in plain language, based on the evidence from real buildings across NSW.
7. Your Rights as a Committee: Academic research is clear: strata committees are vulnerable to approving decisions that benefit professionals more than owners. Understanding that vulnerability is the first step to protecting against it.
8. A Better Way Forward: What good management of a water remediation project looks like: separating diagnosis from remediation, briefing experts properly, and ensuring owners only fund necessary work.

Is this event for you?

This keynote is designed for anyone in a strata scheme who has been told their building needs expensive waterproofing work, or who suspects they might be next.

• Committee members whose buildings have water penetration, leaking balconies, roof failures, or defective waterproofing membranes
• Lot owners facing a special levy for remediation works, wanting to understand what they are actually paying for
• Chairs and Treasurers in schemes where a consultant has already submitted a scope of work and a price
• Any committee member who has ever received a thick report and felt unable to question it or understand it

"Jobs that get proper analysis cost about a tenth of the price of ones that don't. I see that every week. It is not occasional — it is the norm." Ross Taylor, Ross Taylor Associates

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