Lesson 1.1 - Customer Service - Company Director

Summary

The front page of your website at http://absolutestrata.com.au/ makes the following claim:
   "We pride ourselves on personal attention." 
As company director you should at least make a token effort to live up to that.

Detail
If an owner sends you a letter of complaint about the alleged unlawful actions of members of your staff (which will be outlined in future posts) and it is the first time the owner has ever written to you, the following is probably not the correct way of responding. After all it is the owners who are ultimately paying your wages:

From: Lance O'Loughlin [mailto:lance@absolutestrata.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, 26 February 2015 12:19 PM
To: xxxxx
Cc: Bettina Hoffman
Subject: RE: SPxxxxx Fire Safety and Strata Management

I will not be offering any commentary on your correspondence.

Unless you wish me to charge you our hourly rate for my time spent do not forward documents to me for review.

Regards

Lance O’Loughlin | Director | Absolute Strata Management

T. 9553 0244 | F. 9553 0277 | Web. www.absolutestrata.com.au

186 Railway Parade Kogarah NSW 2217

Mail:    PO Box 478 Kogarah NSW 1485

When the owner then replies: 
  "Do I take it from your response that you condone unlawful activity by your staff?"

You should preferably not reply as follows if you "pride yourself on personal attention":

From: Lance O'Loughlin [mailto:lance@absolutestrata.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, 26 February 2015 1:47 PM
To: xxxxx
Subject: RE: SPxxxxx Fire Safety and Strata Management

I have indicated to you that if you wish for me to review your personal correspondence I will be invoicing you for my time.

If you wish to proceed on that basis it is $175.00 billable in 15 minute instalments.

Regards

Lance O’Loughlin | Director | Absolute Strata Management

T. 9553 0244 | F. 9553 0277 | Web. www.absolutestrata.com.au

186 Railway Parade Kogarah NSW 2217

Mail:    PO Box 478 Kogarah NSW 1485

Lesson 2.1 - Fire Safety - Checking Fire Order

Summary
If you receive a proposed fire safety upgrade order from Council, check it carefully.

Detail
If you receive a Notice of Intention to Issue a Fire Safety Upgrade Order from the local Council relating to a building you manage you should actually check it during the 3 months you have to dispute it. You should not leave it to an owner to find numerous mistakes in it and raise them with Council.

It is not a good look and could be very expensive for the owners corporation and dangerous for residents if you fail to notice errors and omissions in the order such as the following:

1. The order incorrectly required the entire roof to be fenced, which would have cost $40,000 based on the cost of installing fencing on the balconies a few years earlier, yet the BCA does not require it.
2. It incorrectly required emergency lighting in lift lobbies, yet they are less than 6m long and hence do not require emergency lighting under the BCA. They also have emergency exit lights already that qualify as emergency lighting. Installing the additional unnecessary lighting was quoted at nearly $3,000.
3. It specified one single smoke detector on common property in the entire high-rise building.
4. It did not specify any fire alarms on common property
5. It did not specify any heat sensors in the basement car park
6. It did not specify a fire hose in the basement car park
7. It did not specify any complying pedestrian exits from the basement car park
8. It did not specify a lighted Exit sign in the basement car park
9. It did not specify the installation of a fire alarm panel
10. It did not specify the installation of an external strobe light
11. It did not address the non-compliant fire stairs railings
12. It did not address the non-compliant fire door notices in the stairwell which carry an $11,000 penalty for non-compliance
13. It did not address many other mandatory requirements specified in the BCA 

Lesson 2.2 - Fire Safety - Breaches of Regulations

Summary
Ensure that fire safety breaches you are notified of are promptly addressed.

Detail
Imagine that you receive a WH&S report on a building you manage dated 28 August 2014 and that it identifies five breaches of fire safety, namely three non-closing fire doors, a roll of carpet illegally stored in the fire stairs and goods blocking egress in a lift lobby.

Imagine also that you subsequently tell an owner in writing: "I am overseeing the fire compliance works for your building".

You of course know that the 2012 unit block fire tragedy in Bankstown was largely caused by breaches of fire safety. The difficult choice you face is whether to do something about the fire safety breaches identified in the WH&S report or to simply ignore them.

Pretend that for some reason you ignore them and that the same breaches and more are raised by the local Council in a Notice of Intention to Issue Fire Order sent to you on 10 October 2014.

Pretend that they are again ignored and are raised in a Fire Safety Upgrade Order dated 13 January 2015.

Pretend they are again ignored and are raised in an updated fire order dated 23 February 2015.

It would not be a good look if in spite of four written notifications of the fire safety breaches you failed to ensure that they were addressed for eight months, and left it to an owner to take action in Fair Trading to have them addressed.

It would be an even worse look if you accepted a quote from a fire company in January to upgrade fire safety but their quote only included addressing one of the six breaches and three months later the breaches still existed.

The photos below show the offending roll of carpet in the August 2014 WH&S report, on 10 February and on 26 April 2015. To add insult to injury it is leaning up against a sign that states that it is an offence to place goods in the stairwell that may impede the free passage of persons.

Similar photos were taken of the other outstanding fire safety breaches on the same dates.

Lesson 2.3 - Fire Safety - Compliance Date

Summary

Ensure that the specified completion date of a fire safety upgrade order is complied with.

Detail
If you receive a Fire Safety Upgrade Order from the local Council which specifies a required completion date you should at least make a token effort to complete the work by that date. Not because you might thereby save someone's life but just to give owners that touchy-feely impression that you actually care about their safety.

If for example the order is issued on 13 January 2015 and states that compliance is required within 28 days, you should try to organise some of the work within those 28 days.

If an updated fire order is issued on 23 February 2015 and requires compliance within 3 months, you should once again make some attempt to comply. If you organise no work until 6 August an outside observer might feel that you had failed in your duty of care to the owners corporation.

That would be especially true if the small amount of work you did organise on 6 August was non-compliant (see Lesson 2.5), meaning that as at 11 September 2015 when you resigned as strata manager you had effectively arranged none of the fire safety upgrade you were first notified of via a Notice of Intent on 10 October 2014.

Lesson 2.4 - Fire Safety - Consistency

Summary
Do not tell owners one day that a fire safety upgrade is urgent and then tell them 6 days later that they have 12 months to comply, when nothing has changed in the interim.

Detail
It is important that staff members try to be consistent when they advise owners about critical issues such as fire safety.

Imagine that you have been served with a fire upgrade order by the local Council on 13 January relating to a building you manage and that it requires compliance within 28 days. Imagine also that you have obtained 3 quotes to do the upgrade work and they are on the agenda for an AGM of the owners corporation scheduled for 4 February.

If a staff member tells the AGM that he and the committee have already engaged a contractor without allowing the owners corporation to vote on the motion because the work is supposedly "urgent", and the minutes confirm that, make sure that he lets other staff members know what he said.

It is not a good look if six days later another staff member states the following in writing:  

"Also attached for your reference please find the Council orders, which simply require that the building be in a position to lodge an Annual Fire Safety Statement within 12 months from the date of their notice."

Having overridden the democratic process regarding which company to use due to "urgency", you should at least try to pretend that the work really is urgent. If you do not organise any fire upgrade work between 13 January when you received the upgrade order and 6 August, it would not look good. 

Similarly if you tell owners that they have 12 months to comply with an order you should ensure that you have that in writing from Council. If an updated fire order issued just 13 days later on 23 February specifies 3 months for compliance not 12 months, owners might start to really question the integrity of your staff members.

     

Lesson 2.5 - Fire Safety - Compliant Equipment

Summary
Ensure that contractors you employ install compliant fire safety equipment to avoid placing the lives of owners at risk.

Detail
If a Council fire safety upgrade order states that certain critical equipment should comply with a particular Australian Standard then it would be a good idea to check that the quote you accept specifies such equipment. If not you should specify that equipment in the work order you issue.

Say for example the Council order requires 240V smoke detectors to be installed in private units and requires that they comply with AS1670.1. They are to be installed in the hallway of each unit between the bedrooms they protect and the front door.

Given your role in organising fire safety upgrades for many buildings you would know that AS1670.1  paragraph 3.25.1 states the following:

"3.25.1… Photoelectric smoke detectors or photoelectric smoke alarms shall be installed in all exits, passageways, corridors, hallways, or the like, that are part of a path of travel to an exit."

The alternative to a photoelectric alarm is an ionisation alarm. They are about $10 cheaper than photoelectric alarms but are unlikely to save the lives of occupants in the event of a smouldering fire according to:

http://www.9jumpin.com.au/show/60minutes/stories/2014/october/the-alarming-truth and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBYREgf542g

Apart from being mandatory under AS1670.1 photoelectric alarms are also recommended by NSW Fire and Rescue: http://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=589 , the Environment Protection Authority: http://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/radiation/hholdsmokedetectors.htm the South Australian Fire Brigade:
http://www.mfs.sa.gov.au/site/community_safety/smoke_alarm_retirement_campaign.jsp and speeches made in Parliament: https://soundcloud.com/recordedbywfsf/gulaptis-smoke-alarms-speech to name a few.

Being a competent strata manager you would of course have done your research on such a critical issue and would know all of that. You would also know that if left to their own devices contractors will often choose the cheapest solution.

So what type of detectors do you think the contractor that you engaged installed in our building on 6 August 2015?

Lesson 2.6 - Fire Safety - Fire Doors

Summary
Do not attempt to convince owners to carry out $25,000 worth of unnecessary work.

Detail
If a Council fire upgrade order specifies that the existing fire doors in a building are to be upgraded and certified as compliant, and that only doors that "are not fire doors" are to be replaced, then that is exactly what you should organise. You should not take it upon yourself to waste $25,000 of owners' funds replacing all of the doors.

If the owners corporation subsequently resolves via two committee meetings and one general meeting that the fire doors are NOT to be replaced but are to be upgraded, then you are required to comply with that. You do not have the authority to issue a directive to a contractor on 6 July to replace the doors. (See s.28(6) and s.29(2) of the Act).

If the committee directs you in writing on 30 April to issue a work order for the purchase of new door handles to allow the existing doors to be upgraded then you should do so. You should not wait until 24 July before issuing the work order, especially if the Council fire upgrade order requires the fire upgrade to be completed by 23 May.

If WorkCover states in a letter to you that it is permissible to replace door handles on a door containing asbestos, and outlines the exact procedure for doing so safely, then you should not suggest to the owners corporation that WorkCover requires doors containing asbestos to be replaced.

If you are aware that an unpaid owner will be upgrading the fire doors, by virtue of having chaired the general meeting that made the decision, you should not suggest to the owners corporation that it has to comply with WorkCover guidelines when WorkCover has no jurisdiction over unpaid workers.

If the building is a residential-only strata building and hence is exempt from WorkCover jurisdiction by virtue of Reg. 7(1) of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 you should not suggest to the owners corporation that it has to comply with WorkCover guidelines.

If you are going to claim that the door handles on asbestos fires doors cannot lawfully be changed then you should ensure that the quote submitted by the fire company you selected does not specify the replacement of the handle on just such a door. Quote (my emphasis):

"4. Replace existing fire rated door handle on ground floor adjacent to lift with a lever action handle. Cost: $120.00 + GST."