‘Combustible Cladding’ – The Impact of Aluminium Composite Panels

The incident responsible for prompting immediate global action was the horrendous incident in June 2017 at Grenfell Tower in London, which nobody hopes to ever see again. 71 people lost their lives that night and countless more families have been impacted by the event; several who are still seeking some form of closure. The public enquiry (The UK’s largest) is set to run into 2020 and around 15 households are still living in hotels over a year after the events occurred.

Further to the above, it is becoming increasingly important for Builders, Developers, Strata & Property Managers, Tenants and all parties involved to be well educated in these ongoing Cladding issues.

The Building Commissioner will publish fortnightly updates on the audit and will report on the findings at the conclusion.

Source: https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/building-commission/state-wide-cladding-audit

Here in WA, an issue with builders is that so many have gone into receivership over the last few years. This leads to the question: what’s going to happen in this situation? Building defects are an ongoing cause for concern as to who is going to pay to rectify faults (leaking windows is a common one). In some cases, the strata sinking fund (the contingency fund all owners place money into) is being used to rectify defects – at a cost to owners. If insurers are not going to foot the bill regarding defects, then they are probably not going to replace millions of dollars’ worth of non-compliant material.

All eyes will be on this system and perhaps we’ll see other States follow suit where an outcome does not fall in favour of owners.

As mentioned in the previous section, with so many WA builders going bust it’s a scenario without clear answers.

As a Building insurance policy comes up for renewal (6-8 weeks out), insurers are sending out questionnaires to the party managing the policy, asking to confirm whether cladding is attached to the insured building in question. If the response is yes, insurers typically want to know the type of cladding being used and the percentage attached to the building; the risk is assessed from there.

One major strata insurer told us that if the potential for a large loss is calculated to be anything over $10,000,000 they would consider not providing insurance terms at all – this may provide some perspective on the size of properties with cladding that insurers are still willing to insure. Premiums are set according to the residual risk of damage occurring – the higher the risk, the higher the premium.

The above tells you that each Building really is assessed on a case by case basis, as there are so many factors for insurers to consider. The more information the insurer can be given, the better chance you have of being offered favourable terms at renewal.

One revolutionary idea is to use expandable graphite in the construction of cladding: these coarse flakes (when treated with acid and heat) split apart and increase in volume by up to 300 times. The expandable graphite (when pressed into sheets) is already used for heat and fire protection in applications ranging from building materials to consumer electronics and fuel cells – cladding is certainly a realistic possibility.

Multiple projects are underway in Africa to increase stocks of graphite, so while the technology is still in its infancy, companies and creative minds are striving to improve the safety of construction materials being used and take the recent tragic global events very seriously.