Episode 188 | Is your property fire safe? | Rob Broadhead, 2020 Fire Protection

Why are properties becoming more flammable?
We’ve invited Rob Broadhead, CEO of 2020 Fire Protection; member of NSW Govt’s Fire Safety Steering Committee and a Board Director of the Fire Protection Association of Australia. Rob has been in the fire protection industry since 1992, and has contributed to Australian Standards and helped draft fire protection training for Strata and Facility Managers.

Rob is passionate about improving general knowledge around fire safety so building occupants and owners can make good decisions about fire protection before the worst occurs.

GUEST LINKS:
https://www.2020fireprotection.com.au/
Here is the NSW Fire & Rescue data: https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/gallery/files/pdf/annual_reports/annual_report_2019_20.pdf
Here is an old video showing the difference in time from ignition to flashover between a modern furnished room & a legacy furnished room. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsReYgKpHbE

HOST LINKS:
Looking for a Sydney Buyers Agent? www.gooddeeds.com.au
Work with Veronica: https://linktr.ee/veronicamorgan

Looking for a Mortgage Broker? www.wealthful.com.au
Work with Chris: hello@wealthful.com.au

Send in your questions to: questions@theelephantintheroom.com.au

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Please note that this has been transcribed by half-human-half-robot, so brace yourself for typos and the odd bit of weirdness…
This episode was recorded in July 2021.

Veronica Morgan: How do you know if an apartment building is fire safe? I'm not just referring to combustible cladding here, but the entire fire protection system does it work. And if it doesn't, how do you find out apart from the safety aspect, what's the potential cost to fix it?

Veronica Morgan: Welcome to the elephant in the room. This is the podcast where we love to talk about the big things in property that never usually get talked about. I'm Veronica Morgan, real estate agent buyer's agent co-host of Foxtel's location, location, location, Australia, and author of auction ready.

Chris Bates: And I'm Chris Bates mortgage broker. Before we get started, I need to let you know that nothing we say on here can be taken as personal advice. We always recommend you engage with the services of a professional.

Veronica Morgan: Don't forget that you can access the transcript for this episode on the website, as well as download our free full forecast report, which experts can you trust to get it right? The elephant in the room.com did I use

Veronica Morgan: Whenever we buy an apartment for a client, we scour the strata report looking for specific information. And one document we see is the annual fire safety statement, or I should say we want to see it. And when it doesn't exist, because it often doesn't, it opens up a whole lot of questions in my mind, especially where many strata managers will say things like, oh, the council hasn't made it mandatory for them to provide it. It all seems a bit loose to me and for getting the risk of loss of life through an uncontained fire for a moment, I've come across enough buildings in my time who have been served with the fire audit and had to raise seven figures in order to get the work done. So we've invited Robert Broadhead, CEO of 2020 fire protection to help us understand these risks. Rob is a graduate of the Institute of fire engineers and unrestricted accredited practitioner, fire safety member of the strata community association, strata services committee member of the new south Wales. Government's fire safety steering committee and a board director of the fire protection association of Australia. So I figured he's pretty well qualified to help us understand all about this. Thank you so much for joining us, Rob,

Chris Bates: To kick us off. Rob in 2020, we're actually changed around the laws around fire protection.

Rob Broadhead: Things changed in July 1st, 2020, until then there was a requirement for a competent fire safety practitioner or a properly qualified person, or a range of other terms like that in July, 2020, the the terminology around that, I changed to accredited practitioner, fire safety and B it became legislation that the person signing off your annual fire safety statement had to be. So

Veronica Morgan: What is an annual fire safety statement?

Rob Broadhead: Good question right here. It is a document that is submitted by the owners to say that everything in their buildings still performs the way that it was designed and installed back when it was either built or the last development application was in place or like the subject we're here to talk about today. A fire audit caused it to change.

Veronica Morgan: So the, this, so we'll unpack all of this because you're saying that the owners of Australia building or, or a company type of building, does it apply to a company title building as well?

Rob Broadhead: It, it applies to all buildings except for class one, which is a house that was built or modified post 1988.

Veronica Morgan: Okay. So they've, we've got a few issues here. We've got post nine and 88. So then that begs the question. What about buildings built before then? And it also the idea that so the owner's responsibility to actually get this certificate or the statement, and obviously it's got to be signed off by an accredited practitioner via safety. What about pre 1988? That's just the biggest glaring thing for me is what about a building built before 1988? Can those people sleep safely at night thinking that if a fire breaks out that they're not going to die

Rob Broadhead: Well in large buildings that are pre IDH are getting captured via development applications or fire order upgrades or Mrs. Smith requesting, you know, complaining about something not working. So all of those are being been captured and vacuumed up bit by bit, but certainly if you're in an apartment building that has no fire protection, you probably should be asking your strata manager what they're doing or what they suggest you do about it.

Chris Bates: And so to say, like, if, if they don't do anything besides the human risk, I mean, is there someone going around and checking buildings and saying, you know what, this one hasn't been upgraded. You haven't got your fire certificate. This is a fire order. Is this, is that sort of the process that happens. And then you get fined and then you've got to do the work, but there's some type of, you know, other outcome, lots to unpack there.

Rob Broadhead: So if we jump off the annual fire safety statement, per se, because an annual fire safety statement is really just something that occurs every year after a building has been built and signed off or after a development patients has been submitted or after a fire has gone through. If we get put that one to the side council fire orders, which is what we probably started coming here to talk about are issued by council and the reasons they issue them. First thing of application, as soon as you put the da in to redo the foyer in NeoStrata building or something like that is captured by the planning legislation. And therefore that planning year submission causes you to have to do some sort of upgrade to meet the da provisions.

Veronica Morgan: Would that include if, say I own apartment 12 and I want to bring about my kitchen or knock out a wall. So, cause that would require a da, right? And I submit as an individual lot owner, a da to council, does that have the same effect,

Rob Broadhead: Less likely, but still highly possible because the councils are obligated under the planning legislation to bring old buildings up to a current level of life safety. Got it.

Chris Bates: We've got a client at the moment looking to buy an older apartment in a pretty cracking suburb. And his words said the building needs a bit of love and care. And for me that's a bit of a warning sign, but let's say that that building want us to do things to upgrade it. And he hasn't checked it. There's a fire certificate sort of annual as hasn't been sorted that that could basically even stop them even wanting to do the work cause they're like, well, I, if we do a development application, we're going to get found out. Is there any risky where the apartment building just sort of flies under the radar, knowing that if they do lodge any sort of da, they're going to be up for all these fire costs or the costs, not that large, it's just really some cases they can really blow out.

Rob Broadhead: Without a doubt, there are apartment buildings who avoided doing works to stop the chance of getting a fire order in terms of the cost applicable. You know, it's, it can, as, as Veronica said, right at the very start, you know, it can be huge. The amount of that these things are worth. So but it depends on the size of the building and the height and things like that. So that the wording, if we step back a bit, it was council is obligated to bring all buildings up to a current level of life safety. So that's a pretty broad statement. And so it doesn't mean the building has to be knocked down and started again, but at the end of a fire upgrade, it must be as safe as it was built today.

Veronica Morgan: So I remember we interviewed Dr. Nicole Johnson sometime ago and about her report on building defects. And we also interviewed David Chandler, the building commissioner in new south Wales. He didn't talk so much about fire safety, but I do remember her report Nicole's report that there was quite a high level of defects in new buildings, which of course in new south Wales now new building commissioners on the warpath, which is pretty amazing. Check out LinkedIn, if you want. So you see some of these little videos where it goes on site and picks some of these buildings apart. So I would imagine that yes, there are standards that buildings had to built to. I would imagine there's a certain level of defect within newly built stock out there that, or shall I say that a certain amount of buildings that probably have defects in the fire system and then there's buildings built before 1988 where the current controls or the current requirements weren't in place just fundamentally, can you just quickly give us a rundown of what's involved in building a building and making it fire safe or, you know, a safe what's a safe living,

Rob Broadhead: I guess it would go back to the, the hierarchy of importance in the building code of Australia. A building when it is built today is not dissimilar to how the Titanic was intended to be built, which was firstly compartmentalization. It was designed to be built into little compartments. So you could have one could catch on fire. Or for that matter here in iceberg, theoretically, it might get flooded or burned, but the rest of it would be safe and habitable and give people plenty of time to get out. So a new building is built an apartment as a nice concrete box with a fire door on it so that the fire cannot spread outside of that. The, the, you know, the outlier, of course it was cladding, which therefore connects compartments outside the building together, which is why cladding is such an issue. That's a whole, another subject really is designed to be firstly compartmentalized, secondly, to have some sort of detection system.

Rob Broadhead: So smoke alarms for units is the most common to tell you the occupant to get out. And then you go outside at your fighter, which is compartmentalizing your apartment. As you go out, some smoke goes out your door and it sets off whatever the common area detection system is, which evacuated everyone else. And you have the exit and emergency lights that guide your pathway, irrespective of whether the power is on or off to get out of there by the fire stairs. Okay. And all, that's all your walkways and everything like that. So if apartment that, can't be obviously your lift, so are your stairs have to have lights, all that sort of stuff. Exactly. Right. That's exactly right. Yeah, no, no, no. At nightclubs with a lot of shame for ones in overseas a few years back.

Veronica Morgan: And what about sprinkler systems? So sprinkler sprinkler

Rob Broadhead: Systems are up until 2019 were largely found in buildings twenty-five meters and above. So 10, 11, 12 stories or thereabouts, but since BCA 19, they have been required in buildings of here's three stories. Now it could be forced or it's not for now. I haven't got that in my top of my head and that was done because it was determined through analysis that it makes a substantial difference to the life safety in the building. And that, that came a lot of that came from the Bankstown fire where Connie Zhang lost her life.

Chris Bates: Is there an easy way to sort of get an understanding of what it may cost? And then you can divide that by the units, I guess if you need to do something fast, right. Like, cause you know, a lot of times speed matters when you're, so is there any sort of easy way to get a rough idea on costs or is it, you know, a whole process that you've got to go through that you can take some time and be quite big range depending on, you know, different buildings.

Rob Broadhead: I think your last statement there, Chris, it can be a very large range. Yeah. It's so determined upon the building height of the building size, the building age, what the construction type is, you know, for example you know, a three-story walk up in King's cross. We had two fire orders there, you know, a few years back one was built in say 25, 30 years ago, mostly concrete construction, mostly brick. And the fire order upgrade, I think was somewhere in the magnitude for, you know, 12 apartments of 50 odd grand, I think between the 12 apartments one that was almost next door, same sort of size 12 apartments, three odd floors was built, you know, 50 years before that had wooden floors had wooden stairs had no real compartmentalization. And I think the fire order upgrade renter a close to 200 K for the same effective sized building and for a a non-technical person, they, for all intensive posts, they looked pretty similar.

Veronica Morgan: I was about to say the building with the timber floors and everything, probably the apartments would sell for more money individually because they've got charm then in the the, the more standard, you know, brick and concrete number next door.

Chris Bates: And it's a Saudi shoes that day, let's say they've lodged, someone's lodger da, whether they're doing something to the building or internally, it was someone's lodged the da. And that set the council off for council sends his fire order, my house, or they got, they got 30 days to raise the cash. And if they don't raise the cash, they have to pay penalty or something like how does that all work? Because that's quite interesting as well because you, you know, a lot of people can't afford it in some, a lot of these apartments and you know, what happens if it gets delayed and you know, is there a whole process there a really good question, Chris?

Rob Broadhead: First one, when when council firsts first makes contact, they they issue within a notice of intention to give a fire safety order. Okay. So and they give you 28 days to reply to them making representations as to why you should or should not deal with it. And they give you that. Not because they're gonna say, oh, it's okay, Mrs. Smith, you don't need to do that after all. Cause you said you couldn't afford it

Veronica Morgan: This way.

Rob Broadhead: You have to do it. There's no doubt. But what you do have in those 21 days is the opportunity to speak with your fire contractor or with fire safety engineers, to determine whether what has been issued is the best way to achieve that. And that's a whole nother subject to go into, but I was just the moment you get one of these us speaking to your fire safety professional, they can, they can help you as to how to go with it. I would not delay.

Chris Bates: And they get that far or to 28 days later, is there then three months to say, you've got to have this done. Otherwise you've got a $50,000 fine or something theoretically.

Rob Broadhead: Yes. However, generally the council is pretty reasonable, that sort of things. They usually will set it out into stages. And the stages usually start with, you know, smoke alarms, ECS and emergency lighting, fire extinguishers, and then moving on the right things that are important on a macro basis about, you know, that they start with the life safety issues immediately

Veronica Morgan: Moving through those four stages you spoke of earlier, is that what you're talking about there? Because I have heard of buildings, you know, they're up to stage four in the fire safety order and, and you know, there's very, and I've also heard of bills up to $2 million. Yeah.

Rob Broadhead: So the first, the first step, sorry to interrupt here is if you get a notice of intention to give a fire order, get in contact with your fire safety professional immediately. Because if you don't, you lose, you may lose the right to argue any of the points are there. Sometimes there's a better way to achieve a fire order than how council has laid it out. And, and so it's so important that you're talking about it immediately. And the second reason for doing that is that counsel you know, is, is also made up of humans and and humans like to deal with humans. I'd like to do with people who are good to deal with and they tend to be less easy to deal with if they get pushback. So council has absolute right to enforce this. There's no point, you know, you can argue individual points, but there's no point arguing that they have the right to do it.

Rob Broadhead: They do. So the first step you need to do is getting the, if I say professional, working out what the best way to achieve this is, and start engaging with counsel as to what you need to do. So I've seen over the years situations where people have stuck their head in the sand or they've fought back for no real legitimate reason with council and council has turned around and enforce the order within the 30 days or 90 days or something like that, that you mentioned earlier, generally when people jump straight onto it and start engaging with the council on a constructive basis, council's usually pretty fair about it. They're like no problems. That's great. I'm happy to happy to work with you on how we staged this out in a reasonable way. So you can raise the funds so you can plan the work. So you can do it in an organized fashion.

Rob Broadhead: Now, a great example is you know, putting the exit emergency lighting or smoke alarms through the common area. If you try and do it in a hurry, you probably have to use square duct or conduit or something, which is really ugly. But if you plan it out, well, you might be able to find, you know, combine it with repainting your foyer or redoing the ceilings or something like that. So you can do it in neat fashion that still achieves the, the outcomes.

Chris Bates: Have you saying like a lot of finance companies sort of playing in this space where they see an opportunity where stratas are going to have to start paying these bills and they're offering sort of fire protection sort of loans to Charlotte. Like, has it been a arise in that as well?

Rob Broadhead: Personally, I've not seen it, but I guess we're anonymous almost like the way from that. So it's entirely possible. And I've certainly on an ad hoc basis at the strata community association conference that I was at a month ago, back when we were allowed to leave out homes there was a lot of finance companies in the conference with exhibition space. So I would, I would suggest that yes, there is no, no

Veronica Morgan: They're in the city of Sydney council area. There was a period of time there where it just seemed to be that far orders was the, you know, the order of the day, nearly every building you come across had had one and they were going through the process of upgrading. And it doesn't seem to be such a hot topic on the pun at the moment. However, if councils have sort of absolute power to enforce these, are they inclined to get on a warpath and start working through every single building that's in their area? Or are they too busy and constraint in terms of their own resources to do that? Or is there a time when we can expect that to happen?

Speaker 4: The main reason that they issue an order is because someone's put in development application. So in the case of city of Sydney, a bloody lot of buildings in the last five, 10 years have been renovated and therefore had DAS. So mostly captured by those means. And that takes up a lot of council's resources. And therefore there's very few council officers just wandering the streets, looking for them. Whereas in the early days, that's what they did. They would go door to door looking for a lack of fire systems or fire safety and start issuing. But they've been absolutely practical just with the DAS in the past five, 10 years.

Veronica Morgan: So there's actually an enormous risk then it's sort of quite different to how I imagined it, to be honest, I've always looked at if I can't see that annual fire safety statement, that if they don't have it, then I think to myself, oh, well, they're vulnerable to actually having an order. But then I guess if they never submit a da or trigger that response in the council, then they may not. But it's actually worse than that because it's not so much a financial obligation that may be looming. It's actually potentially, like you say, a life safety issue, that there are a lot of buildings out there that would not comply purely because they were built before 1988 and they're flown under the radar.

Rob Broadhead: Exactly. Right. Veronica. Exactly. Right. And I think, and this is my opinion, and I'm clearly biased in this thing in fire officials, but building owners and therefore the executive committee on instructor really have an obligation to the people, the occupant, to the building to be looking at the life and fire safety obligations. So they're there still obligated to do many things under the legislation. It's simply that council hasn't enforced it yet. It's a gray area. Isn't it? It is until it is until they're caught up in the annual fire safety statement regime. Yes.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. Because I mean, I guess it's a bit, blah, I find some strata managers quite blahzay. And when we say, well, you know, they don't have an annual fire safety statement. Why is that all council don't require us to have one. And I just think, well, I don't, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Rob Broadhead: It's, it's not, it's not, it's not a good thing. And, and and any building built post 1988 has an obligation to submit an annual fire safety statement, irrespective of here the council asks for it. That said, if they have no fire equipment, then that doesn't apply either. So there is a hole there. Yeah. Yeah.

Veronica Morgan: And so building pre an 88, say it's seven stories high. So it wouldn't have any sprinklers either. Or would it hang on? No, it wouldn't because it's yeah. So it wouldn't have any sprinklers at the upper levels, potentially. It doesn't have fire doors potentially like, because I always remembered this thing of, in talking about building defects of the colors, you know, those, those fire protective things because pipes and wiring and conduit and all sorts of stuff goes through walls between these, these cells, as you talk about each, each apartment, supposedly being a contained unit. So therefore fire can't spread. But if, if these holes in the walls where pipes and such run through, if those collars aren't protecting one side of the wall to the other side, to stop fire, transferring from one to the other, you know, there isn't a huge risk. And once the building has been built and all the cladding spot on and, and the wall tiles and all sorts of stuff, how do you even know that it's been built

Rob Broadhead: To code you? Don't unless it's captured by the annual fire CPC regime and therefore inspected and verified every year, how can

Veronica Morgan: You inspect behind the walls? Like in the walls? Oh,

Rob Broadhead: Sorry. You cannot inspect behind the wall. So you can only go as far as you can. You can look. So the annual fire safety statement, regime, inspects, and verifies that it still is, as it was designed to performs, as it was designed, it's not a recertification of what should have been installed.

Veronica Morgan: If you like, what you're hearing here, please share this episode with others, you feel would benefit. And while you're at it, why not leave us an iTunes review five stars, please. Every review helps make it easier for other people to find us and hear what our amazing guests have to say. We love hearing your questions and we're planning more listener Q and a episodes. Please send your questions in. You can send them via the website, which is the elephant in the room.com today. You or directly via email two questions@theelephantintheroom.com.edu.

Chris Bates: And what more percentage of these apartments have actually went through your travels, running through your understanding? Rob, I mean is, you know, 80, 90% of apartment books been done now and are doing these sort of annual thing, or is it more the other way where it's still a huge number of apartments on know a big risk with a lot of people looking, going, hang on a sec that one's not done, how much is going to cost?

Rob Broadhead: Do we have the money for it, et cetera, Docker on that. But, but I imagined that will be part of the building commissioner, David Chandler's future plans. So you know, his plans at the moment, he's still, as you said, look up LinkedIn or anywhere to see him beating developers over the head. But the, the fire safety steering committee that I sit on with Matt presses his, one of his men, it's all about the future stages, which is coming back around to the built environment.

Rob Broadhead: Post-Construction age. How do we make sure that all buildings now and in the future remain safe? And so they're there. I guess the whole Miami building collapse is probably a worst case scenario. It doesn't relate to fire, but it's the same concept. Buildings will not stand up forever unless they continue to be maintained and continue to be maintained by people who are competent to do so. So ensuring that existing buildings are safe is part of a David Chandler's. He said 20, 23 plans.

Chris Bates: This is a national thing as well. Or is this a state based thing?

Rob Broadhead: This is a state-based thing at the moment, but it ties in very nicely with the ABCB. The Australian building codes board is currently doing a significant review. And I'm trying to think of what the acronym for it is, but it relates to what was set out in the showgirl we report. So in terms of a life safety and fire safety in buildings, so you've probably heard Bronwyn Weir on, on the news or things like that. So what they came up with is what the ABCB is working on. And there's quite a lot of interaction happening at the moment between new south Wales, the building commissioners, steering committees, Michael Lambert, who wrote the lab report. I think a post Bankstown, all of those are talking, but at the moment, this is a new south Wales thing, but there's a lot of interest from the other states. For the future,

Chris Bates: From your awareness of Victoria, sort of Queensland on a similar path. I mean or is it a way, so the lady in the front for the first time.

Rob Broadhead: We're leading the front on the phone for the first time, but certainly Queensland was all the way ahead of us. So they had the children's backpack as fire and a couple other things. And so they implemented however much we like or dislike it if we happen to be in Queensland, working in Queensland, but they implemented occupational licensing, a whole lot of requirements for competence and training and the like for people working in this space and driving fire and life safety many, many years ago. So there there've been ahead of us for a long time. And now new south Wales is, is well and truly leading that the next stage.

Veronica Morgan: It's horrible to think that it takes tragedy to promote change. Isn't it it's really awful, but I mean, I'm actually quite amazed. The David Chandler, you, you hear a lot of government organizations and anything oh yeah, yeah. Whatever toothless tiger. But honestly, he's, he's got locked jaw he's, you know, he puts his money. He really does put, puts his money where his mouth is and gets into action. And, you know, and I'm hoping that absolutely puts a massive broom through the entire industry. But like, I think what you say is really interesting and it's something that we all need to remember and in that is that we need to maintain our buildings. So, you know, I interviewed actually on your first home buyer guide podcast, we interviewed a building inspector that a very old building inspector that was not that old as in the sixties, but he taught me so much because we used to get him to do a lot of our inspections when I first started as a buyer's agent, you know, and he said, the building starts deteriorating the minute there basically you're hammer the last nail in, you know, the minute it's finished, the building starts deteriorating.

Veronica Morgan: And I guess that the fire safety system is part of that building. Isn't it stuff breaks down. Right. So if someone's living in a building and they're looking around, what are the signs that they're going to be okay, if there's a fire, like what can they see around them? That's going to give them a clue as to, okay, this is probably,

Rob Broadhead: I guess the the simple ones to look for that one is first in the apartment, you need a working smoke alarm. You need a working smoke alarm that is in between the living area and your bedroom and each bedroom. That's the first one that is, there's a 50, 54% greater chance of surviving a fire in your property. If you have a working smoke alarm, that's massive. Think of that 54% greater chance of living if you have a working smoke alarm, but.

Chris Bates: It's also your location you mentioned there, which I think is quite interesting. So if you've got multiple bedrooms, it's really between the living area you said, and the bedroom is that sort of the goal.

Rob Broadhead: That's exactly right between the living area and every bedroom because, you know, fires yeah. Aside from, you know, people smoking in bed and perhaps a heater next to their bed, a lot of fires occur because of, you know, common area haters in their lounge rooms cooking fires, things like that. So you want to know that something has occurred in the rest of your apartment long before it gets to your bedroom. And I can send you the link later, but you can probably look it up as well. There's a whole lot of studies on how long it takes from ignition to a standard room flashing over. So I was down at the laundry and flashing over and by flashing over, I mean, he totally engulfed in fire and habit in any way, shape or form. And so in the 1950s, I think it was when they did the tests lounge room that was decked out like your grandparents had in the 1950s, generally took about 25 minutes. I think it was from the point that you dropped your cigarette down the side of the lounge and it ignited through to the room flashing over. What's that long. Really? No, it's not very long, is it? But that's, if you think that's scary, they did the same tests on a modern fitted out lounge room with polyester and polyethylene and all the other solid fuels, right? Fuels. We effectively make our furniture out of these days and this is going up by memory. But if I recall it was somewhere around the three minutes and 20 seconds,

Veronica Morgan: Oh my God, three

Rob Broadhead: Minutes, 20 seconds, or something like that. Crazy shorter time that you have from ignition in your lounge room to the point that that entire area is habitable and golfed engulfed in fire. So that's why the smoke alarm is the most so important. And so

Veronica Morgan: Your bedroom, right? Obviously what often you have to run through a living area to get out of your house. Yep. What you're basically saying is in the main areas in which the fire would be created or started, and if it could be within three and a half minutes, that smoke alarm has to be pretty bloody sensitive and you have to get up and get out of there ASAP, you don't even have time to get your Jeremy's on. If you're sleeping naked.

Rob Broadhead: That's exactly right. Yes. My neighbors are going to be very scared if we ever have a house fire,

Chris Bates: You know, we've got a multi-level house, but maybe a fire would start. I mean, you never really know where it's going to start. The, it could be wiring or something causes it, but is it wise to sort of have that escape plan, you know, smashing windows or something, you know, do you think that's what people lens people should be going to, or do you think people should just fall back on the fire alarm? Or I think everybody should think about their, their fire safety plan, but the first thing is smoke alarms under the current building code and smoke glum legislation requires it. If you have a multi-level house or apartment that there should be smoke alarms on both levels and interconnected so that if one goes off, the other goes off. So if you have a kitchen downstairs, there's a fire there and it sets off the smoke alarm near the kitchen. It should also set up the one upstairs to wake you up. You know, I

Veronica Morgan: Mean, we started talking about apartment buildings and we will go back there. But one of the things I don't know, years ago, I remember reading about this family that were trapped inside because their bars and the window, and I have bars on the front section of my house. And I also have a front grill between the front door and the street, but obviously the key in the front door, you know, I'm paranoid about actually making sure that you can get out, that he can, you know, it's all good to be safe from robbers. There's a gap. There's a, there's more than a meter between the grill and the door. I'm always mindful of. It's all good to, to be safe, be safe and break in. But what about breaking out? You know, I, and it, it's just one of those things that stuck in my mind. I think I must have read that written newspaper article when I was in my teens, even, but it's really stuck in my brain, but going back to the apartments, I think one thing that's alarms me is that if you're looking at buildings that are built before 9 88 and might be less than 10 stories high, or how many stories high to get that 25 meters in height, don't have the sprinkler systems may not have fire doors may not have alarms. Although I think that's separate though, isn't it?

Rob Broadhead: That is so, so there was a smoke alarm legislation 2006, which is one of the only bits of retrospective or grandfathering legislation that requires a smoke alarm in every apartment, which is rented or sold or every house that is rented or sold. And that was further strengthened the last year by the residential tenancies act. If I'm recalling the wording correctly, which requires you to have a working smoke alarm at all, or

Veronica Morgan: Reason, you know, older people could be living in an apartment, they haven't sold. They've never rented it out. It's on the fifth floor, in a building that was built 1960s, you know, so there's actually quite a lot of individual properties that are quite vulnerable. Yeah. And it certainly got me thinking because certainly in our due diligence and our business, you know, and I'm thinking more on the financial side of things because I'm thinking, well, look, if this building slapped with an order, do your responsibility to commit to, that could be in the magnitude of, you know, it could be a hundred thousand dollars. If it, if it's, it's a really expensive one and there's not enough apartments. So I'm sorry, I'm a bit speechless. Cause I'm a bit horrified at the risks here.

Rob Broadhead: Not dissimilar to the security bars that you have on your windows, your life, your life safety is a balancing act between security and fire safety. Just like when you're posting that apartment, whether it has a fire order or not is a balancing act between, you know, the life safety of living in cities said building versus the cost of doing so personally, no one wants to expend the money. I'd much rather live in a building which had a current level of life safety because we know how fire fast fire can, can can grow. I'll I'll find you that, that, that linked to that YouTube showing that study because I've shown it to all my technicians and almost bar none, they all were shocked by how fast fire grows, because most people don't don't ever deal with fire. They, you know, sit around a campfire occasionally and the fingers with a marshmallow, but rarely does anyone actually see firsthand how fast these things grow and how rapidly it moves from safe to you're dead.

Chris Bates: The, obviously there's a far broader the cost and you may be able to finance that, you know, let's say you did buy a apartment and a natives fire order. And you know, maybe some finance strata finance could say, but you try to finance. You got to get everyone to agree to it. And a lot of people, they want to agree to that. And so, you know, you might have to fund it out of your own pocket, but I sort of think about, if you don't bring your apartment building up to space, they could be fine to count some of the things like that. But is there a sort of insurance risk as well here? Where if there is legislation saying that this building needs to be up to speed, but it's not. And then there is a fire and everyone gets outside with that say, but the building does burn or severely damage. The insurance company won't pay out because they didn't do what they needed to do for the order. Is there a sort of massive gap there?

Rob Broadhead: I think that's way above my pay grade to answer that one. Chris, I imagine you your insurer would probably be looking at those things when they're renewing your insurance. I mean, I my factory units where w where our office is based has flammable cladding on the outside of it. It's, it's only two stories and it's only a factory and therefore the building code actually allows it. But our insurer is well and truly aware of it, asking questions about it. And our insurance policy unfortunately reflects the fact. We have flammable cladding on the outside, irrespective of its compliance,

Veronica Morgan: Flammable cladding is another issue. Isn't it again, because that's not so much a fire protection system. That's actually a building material that really should never become a building material. And I guess we don't need to go into, like you said earlier, it basically links the entire structure. So basically once that's on fire, then there's nothing to stop it. What are you involved in any way? Am I asking you sort of out of, out of context, are you involved in any way in the remediation works and the program that's being undertaken because there's a lot of opacity around this, isn't there in terms of what buildings are actually clad in inflammable cladding versus those that aren't, and it's, it's a bit hard for buyers to get any information on this, because of course, nobody wants to publicize it. Their building is clad with this stuff.

Rob Broadhead: I am not involved in it whatsoever. However, going back to the first point, cladding in its essence, completely derails, the concept of building design, which is to compartmentalize each session. So it cannot spread. And going back to five systems, generally, they're designed to work with one fire and therefore anything which connects these things together and causes fires to occur in multiple locations or even smoke to occur in multiple locations, derails the entire safety of the building. So if you are in a building with cladding, or you are thinking about buying into a building with clouding for your own life safety, I would suggest that you get someone to have it tested properly. So I think you know, the CSI rose the warrant and fire research, and a few others do tests on cladding to determine whether it is flammable or not. That's as far as I can, I can speak on the subject.

Veronica Morgan: Interesting. So I guess what that's saying is that if you're in a building that is clad, get it tested. And if you're looking at buying in a building that is clad, then maybe just give it a wide berth because you can't get access to that information. If you're just looking to buy,

Rob Broadhead: No, you can't, you certainly should ask for it. But I do not know.

Chris Bates: The main thing we all this is she'll be right. Obviously the legislation's hopefully stopping that, but you know, that that mentality is, is not enough with this, you know, cause it's obviously it's very rare, but when it does happen, it's a, life-threatening one more point to make.

Rob Broadhead: I was researching this one yesterday. I think when you buy or sell an apartment that used to be as to be called a 1 49 certificate. And I think it's called a council session, 10.7. Now

Veronica Morgan: This is owning certificate and I just approve for you. Go ahead. And he, Rob, this is only in new south Wales, every single jurisdiction or state or territory has a legislated requirements or vendor disclosure requirements. Right. And so in new south Wales and in Victoria, there's also a zoning certificate that the vendor has to, has to provide. And these come from council. So this is in the contract of sale in new south Wales.

Rob Broadhead: Yeah. So if we're talking about fire orders, once that fire is issued, each has gone past the intention to give one, it will be listed in there. So that's something that's really important for any buyers to look for because it'll it'll list a fire order it'll list any I don't know about clotting it'll certainly list any DA's and fire orders and things like that that are in there so important that people are looking for. That's

Veronica Morgan: A great tip and you know what, I've never looked there for it. I've already just noted down that I'm going to add that to our due diligence process in my business and my team will go great. Another thing to look into this, you know, we do look for various thing documents in a contract at the outset of our due diligence process anyway, and I'm just going to add that to Allie. So thank you so much for that. Rob, have you got a Dumbo in

Rob Broadhead: Terms of buildings are so, so many, but the key to it is, is, you know, we've touched on before buildings have to be maintained. Okay. And so in terms of fire protection, that means that you are inspecting and testing it every month, every six months, every year, depending on the type and size of building to make sure that it continues working. And then that is separate to every year issue and annual fire safety statement to say that it's still performs the way it was designed. Those things, there are so important. We found a building quite a large one to get ahead, almost 600 apartments all up across five or six buildings. And it had an, it was system, which is an emergency warning and intercommunication system. And when we tested it, we found that in the apartments, we were only getting 55 decibels. So it's a measurement of sound pressure level 55 decibels in the bedrooms of that apartment book.

Rob Broadhead: And this, this had not been picked up previously. This made us rather unpopular with the building owners, but where we were going with this as is the standard requires either 65 decibels at all points, the floor 75 decibels at the bedhead, or no than 100 decibels at the door to the apartment. And this one, he had 55 decibels. So to put that in perspective, sitting here doing this podcast, I'm speaking at about 60 decibels. Wow. Okay. And imminent shows that you need in excess of 70 decibels to wake a sleeping adult in, you know, where they're in REM sleep. I think it is. And a child probably requires higher than that. And so this, this very large building with very, very many apartments had 55 decibels at the bed heads. And so in simple terms, it was, it was quiet. And then you usually watch your television quite a bit. I'm talking now trying to wake people up to say that there was a fire emergency in their building when you lounge room can ignite

Veronica Morgan: Impossible within three minutes. Yeah. That's alarming. And so did they do anything about it? Oh, that's the Dumbo. Oh my God. Wow.

Rob Broadhead: That was the wall for two thick cause I think I was the the emergency warning and intercommunication system had undersized amplifies providing the volume to the speakers. They didn't have the speakers in the correct locations. And therefore the entire thing was derailed by the fact that it wasn't installed or designed or or, or tested properly until that moment. But that's an easy fix. Surely you just turn the volume up or do you know, it's not like it's a massive structural fee. The amplifies were undecided. So it was so I think all, and then some speakers were missing. So I think across the 600 units was probably $80,000 to fix it. So right. Hence that was good justification to to fire us from said side

Veronica Morgan: The small cost over 600 units. That's right.

Rob Broadhead: Unfortunately. And you know why I'm so excited to be on this podcast and others like it is that no one cares about fire protection until they are literally on fire, running, screaming out of the room about to die. Oh my God. And it's so important for us to not just think about it from a financial perspective. And yes, I'm biased when I say that, but it's the reason why we have relatively few deaths choose a fire in Australia. You know, apartment buildings particularly is because we have pretty good fire systems. They're only as good as they are regularly maintained and checked to make sure they continue performing well.

Chris Bates: I mean, sometimes it's on the news. Right. You see the fire in somewhere and it's on the news, but a lot of them obviously aren't you got any idea of just how many or what percentage of apartments or is there actually like 10, five other apartments in new south Wales a year? Or is it like 10,000? I have no idea. I I'm trying to Google and his farm rescue website right now, but they, they, they, they can tell you, I don't know the answer to that one. Yeah.

Veronica Morgan: I've got a question for you, Rob, just, just to sort of find a question. I was in an apartment once and I noticed there were no smoke detectors, but there were these other sort of little device stuck to the roof there. And they said they were a heat sensor.

Rob Broadhead: What's the difference in an apartment? Generally you will have a smoke alarm until a smoke alarm is a standalone unit. It, yes, it can be incubated with another one, if you have two levels, but it's a standalone unit that both detect smoke and alarms to tell you to get out. So it's a domestic device designed to get you out of your own apartment or house as quickly as possible, depending on the size of the building. It may also have a fire detection and alarm system, which means you have smoke or eight to take, which connect back to a five panel, which therefore evacuates everyone in the building. If there is a fire. So in many new apartments, you'll see a combination of heat detectors and smoke alarms. So the smoke alarm tells you to get out and the heat detector, once your apartment hates up to a certain level, tells everyone else in the building to get out,

Veronica Morgan: Right? So you need both and not one or the other.

Rob Broadhead: It's it's, it depends on the exact building desire. That's, that's hard to answer, but certainly in some buildings from the, is the mid sixties to mid seventies for buildings that were, I think it was 25 meters to 41 meters in effective height, you are allowed to have heat detectors instead of sprinklers. So that's also, it could be what you're saying, but yeah, sometimes you will see heat detectors, which are those sensors you're talking about in apartments instead of, or as well as smoke alarms. But certainly if you see them, they don't override the smoke alarm legislation of 2006 or the residential tenancies act requiring smart working smoke alarm.

Veronica Morgan: That's the key point here, I think. And thanks for clarifying that, Rob, thank you so much for coming along today. I know this is a topic that you're very passionate about and for me this has been a question that I've really been niggling at the back of my mind for some time. So I really do appreciate you coming along and explaining all this stuff. And I certainly, as I said, I'm going to just tweak up some of our due diligence and our business, but it, this is really important, obviously not just people buying apartments with people who already live in an own one. Thank you so much for coming along. Thank

Rob Broadhead: You very much for having me on so much appreciated failure up. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Bates: We want to make you a better elephant rider and this week's elephant rider training is well

Veronica Morgan: After that quite sobering conversation, we really pride ourselves in our business on our due diligence. And we do go to March greater Lance and I know most buyers will do even most buyer's agents would do. As I said earlier, I'm going to add a few steps, our due diligence process for apartment buildings. I think this is really, really critical stuff, but just want to quickly touch on some of the other things that we do in terms of due diligence and some other things that can be found in that 1, 4, 9 certificate, two, such as bushfire zones and flood zones and, you know, compulsory acquisition potentially for road widening and all sorts of things like that are actually found in that zoning certificate, which is part of the contract. That is something that I would encourage buyers to read, you know, but particularly in new south Wales in Victoria, where it is a mandatory document that has to be issued or provided by vendors, you can even in other states you can request this sort of information, whether you get it or not is another kettle of fish.

Veronica Morgan: But when we buy a property, we do look at a lot of other things around your diligence. You know, it's, it's not enough when you're buying an apartment just to tick the box. Okay? Yes, I've got the contract review bias listed and yeah, I got a strata report. You need to get in there and read it and understand what it is you're buying into. And we're starting in particular, you're actually buying into, what's sometimes referred to as the fourth layer of government. There are requirements. And also, you know, if you go back, there's a number of episodes where we've interviewed Amanda Farmer, she's a strata lawyer. And one episode we interviewed a man who was around the obligations that you have as an owner in Australia building. And you have an obligation to maintain that building. So it's really important that when you're reading that strata report, you get a sense of how seriously those other owners take that obligation because you are picking up part of that when you buy, you are taking on that. And if those other owners don't take it seriously or have not maintained that building over time, ultimately, you know, you're going to be paying for the sins of other people or the fact that other people haven't actually fulfilled their obligations and in a hot market like we have at the moment, buyers will overlook all of this stuff, but you have to realize that you are taking on this as a liability and just getting into the property market at all costs and sort of thinking she'll be right. It's actually not good enough.

Chris Bates: Yeah. Were saying the financial impact with some clients and clients have come to us and said, oh, you know, the building's got all these issues. You just want to get out of it, et cetera. But you know, just recently a clot bought into, you know, a really established suburb, you know, more expensive apartment as well. And she's had an absolute nightmare for, you know, almost 18 months now. And she's selling that apartment, the emotional toll of that experience, the fighting the toxicity in the building, the w not similar to fire repairs, but it was, you know, water sort of damage it that toll emotionally, not just financially, she's been able to get out of it because you know, the marketing market's forgiving in times like now, but you know, ultimately there's an emotional thing and it's stressful and you can get stuck in these buildings and then you can't sell it and you know, all these. So there's that due diligence upfront, you know, her situation. I don't think it really could help cause a lot of the issues started just after she bought. But you know, those just that due diligence can save you, you know, potential years of pain that you won't ever get back. So just be very conscious of that, you know, can you afford to take that emotional pain on as well? I think when

Veronica Morgan: You say that when you buy a property and then they sing started afterwards, often there are some signs, you know, that there's something looming and there's some critical points in the, in the age of a building, I guess, as well. And one is at that end of the home owner's warranty period. If the building is three stories or less in height, there's a homeowner's warranty period of seven years, you know, and usually leading up to that, they will get a building report done. So that really itemizes all the issues that they want to try and get the builder to rectify. And that can often be a very expensive time for a building because they're going to have to sometimes start forking out legal costs and a whole bunch of costs before they actually get any money back and they may not get any money back or they may not get enough back to cover the cost of what they've actually expended.

Veronica Morgan: And so, and then the homeowners warranty insurance policy is really only if the build has gone bust anyway. And so if, if you know, that's the fallback position, you know, so what they're trying to do is actually get the builder, hopefully who hasn't gone bust to come back and rectify work. So it's a very complicated, long drawn out process that can be very punishing for the owners and the people in the committee. And also, I mean, I, I looked at a building recently where, you know, it wasn't in the strata report. W what we could see is that they'd sued the builder, and there was an agreement supposedly, but we had no record of that agreement because they subsequently decided to Sue for costs. So there was an agreement, there was no documentation of that agreement, or we just told it, there was agreed. The builder would, would rectify.

Veronica Morgan: But of course, what was holding up that statement was this subsequent, illegal activity. But then in a bit of digging in which was not in Australia strata report, I found out that two apartments had been uninhabitable because of water. And that information was not in the strata report, but what wasn't there got us digging to try to see if we could fill in the gaps. And I think that's a really important thing to understand is that these strata reports, it's not enough just to get one. You have to then really start quizzing any, if you've got questions and you can't get answers because the strata manager wouldn't talk to us, then you, it's not worth the risk. Please join us for a next episode. We're talking all about

Chris BatesAugust 9, 2021de-index

Episodes

Episode 188 | Is your property fire safe? | Rob Broadhead, 2020 Fire Protection