I’m sorry, run that by me again? We don’t require engineers to be licensed, qualified or registered? So the hundreds of shonky-looking resi-towers newly metastasising across our city don’t just look like slums-in-waiting but may have no structural or fire integrity to speak of because anyone, including my great aunt Cecily’s dog Tozer, can sign their engineering certificates. Seriously?

Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:

Tuesday’s interim report on the twice-evacuated Opal tower, by engineering professors Hoffman, Cart and Foster, tells us the building is structurally sound, in that it (probably) won’t fall down, but has major damage. Two causes are pinpointed: faulty design, using lower-than-required safety factors, and poor construction, deviating from both design and good practice.

The building, as you know, is pretty ornery to look at. A green glass faceted triangle far taller than any neighbours, its look of soulless oppression is relieved only by a number of tall “slots” or “vertical gardens”, walled in six-storey pre-cast load-bearing concrete. It’s in these walls, and the beams supporting them, that the damage has principally occurred.

But what’s fascinating about this appalling concatenation of errors and deceits is the degree to which it is systemic. We don’t know how widespread building disasters are because no-one is collecting data, but as the UNSW City Futures Research Institute recently wrote, our “system allowing defective apartment buildings” creates huge social and economic risks for the new compact city.