Project Intervene: Resolving serious defects in residential apartment buildings

We work with a developer and owners corporation to negotiate an agreement.

Apartment block with hanging gardens and plants on the outside

Key information

  • If your class 2 residential apartment building has serious defects to common property, you may be eligible for Project Intervene (the ‘program’).
  • We aim to negotiate an agreement with the developer to get serious defects fixed. It’s an alternative to costly and time-consuming legal options, like going to court. 
  • Your building must meet certain criteria to be eligible.
  • Under Project Intervene, the developer pays for the remediation works and all associated costs of the program.
  • Registrations for the program close on 30 November 2023.

Our approach to fixing serious defects

We aim to ensure serious defects to common property get fixed. We use the powers under the Residential Apartment Buildings Act 2020 (‘RAB’ Act) to compel a developer or builder to remediate serious defects.   

These RAB Act powers permit us to issue a developer or builder with a direction or range of orders to fix non-compliant building work.  

Using an Undertaking to fix serious defects

One option available to us under the RAB Act is a Developer Undertaking.  

An Undertaking is an agreement offered by the developer to the Secretary of the Department of Customer Service for the benefit of the owners corporation.  

We work with a developer to finalise the list of serious defects and a time limit for when they will be fixed. Once the list is finalised, a Deed Poll is signed by both the developer and the owners corporation. Once signed, a Deed Poll is legally binding on both parties. 

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It's about the fix, not the fight.

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Is your building eligible?

To be eligible for Project Intervene, your building must meet all the following criteria:

  1. The building must be a class 2 residential apartment building with three or more storeys (a storey of a building is from the ground up and does not include levels below ground);
  2. There must be a serious defect and it must relate to one of the five building elements in the common property;
  3. The developer or builder who did the building work must still be active or trading;
  4.  The occupation certificate was issued in the last 10 years.

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