Opal builder Icon sets date for big fix, but it will take four to six weeks

The Australian 12:00am January 18, 2019

Ean Higgins

The builder of the cracked Opal Tower in Sydney’s west plans to start work fixing it next week, subject to final negotiations with ­engineers representing owners.

But it has warned more than 100 units will not be ready for reoccupation for four to six weeks.

A spokeswoman for Icon, the Japanese-owned group that built the recently completed 36-storey block at Olympic Park, said the company had decided it would carry out the remediation, expected to be a huge and costly task though no figures have been released.

“All the materials have already been ordered, everything is there on site,” the spokeswoman said.

However, Icon, which built the 392-unit high rise under a $165 million contract with developer Ecove, said while it would take on that responsibility, it did not accept it was legally to blame for the damage.

“We pay, but that is in no way an admission of liability,” the spokeswoman said.

Sources said Icon expected a protracted legal battle over who would ultimately have to accept what share of responsibility for the cost, with the design engineers WSP also in the frame along with the state government as owner of the land.

Icon’s spokeswoman said that by today the company would have answered all remaining questions from the engineers representing the owners’ corporation Cardno about how it planned to fix the building, and subject to a final round of negotiations, work could start by the end of next week.

The cracking on levels 4 and 10 on Christmas Eve terrified the 300 residents and led to their evacuation, creating a crisis with political elements since the state government fast-tracked approval as part of its state significant-site legislation.

This week an interim report by engineering professors hired by the government found problems with the building’s design and construction, and said “significant rectification works” were needed.

Icon has been paying the ­accommodation costs for residents forced out of the building.

The Icon spokeswoman said the engineers representing the various parties had agreed 50 to 60 apartments in the building that were either subject to cracking themselves, or required for the erection of support struts along the “line of load”, could not be moved back into “for a significant period of time”.

A similar number of apartments had been assessed as being too close for comfort to where the works would occur, and the number of those excluded from reoccupation for some weeks is 105. Icon will continue to pay accommodation costs for those residents.

All parties now agree residents of the other close to 300 units in Opal Tower could move back in, and residents of about 35 to 40 apartments have done so since last weekend.

Having been checked and ­rechecked by four independent sets of structural engineers, the Icon spokeswoman said, “they are literally the safest apartments in Sydney”.

“There is no reason for people to be concerned any longer, but I understand there is an emotional dimension, it has been a really distressing period,’’ she said.