Sydney's Opal Tower is declared defect-free nearly eight years on

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Opal Tower, the 36-storey apartment building at Sydney Olympic Park that was emptied on Christmas Eve 2018 after its concrete cracked, was declared defect-free on Saturday 10 October 2026. ABC News reported the same evening that a ribbon was cut at the tower to mark the moment, close to eight years after the evacuation.

The chairman of the Opal Tower Owners Corporation, Shady Eskander, told the ABC: "It's fantastic to announce that Opal Tower is defect-free." According to the broadcaster, he said the building now carries a 20-year structural warranty, which he described as an Australian first, that every owner has been fairly compensated and that every legal matter is resolved.

The tower holds 392 apartments. The ABC notes that the New South Wales government of the day answered the affair with a building commissioner and a set of reforms. Those rules, as they read today, are what the buyer of a new apartment in the state relies on.

ABC News, 10 October 2026, for the building and the warranty; The Urban Developer, 18 December 2019, for the builder's estimated outlay.

What was announced on 10 October

The ABC's account of the ceremony is short on figures. Mr Eskander told the broadcaster that millions of dollars had been spent to reach this point, without giving a total, and that the consultants, the builder and the others involved in the design and construction had worked on the repairs together. The report names the three firms behind the original project: the developer Ecove, the builder Icon and the engineers WSP.

It also says the years since 2018 included a class action, two other legal cases and long relocations: one resident was out of her apartment for 11 months. The report gives no compensation amount.

Icon describes itself on its own website as part of Kajima Corporation, the Japanese construction group.

Christmas Eve 2018 and the weeks that followed

The building was a few months old when it failed. The Urban Developer, a trade publication, reported that the tower was completed in August 2018 at a stated cost of A$128 million. On the afternoon of Monday 24 December 2018, residents heard loud cracking. The ABC reported the next morning that the alarm was raised at about 2:45pm, that about 3,000 people were moved out of the tower and the streets around it, that the nearby railway station and several roads were closed, and that police said the tower had moved "1 millimetre to 2 millimetres". The crack was on level 10.

The return was gradual. The Newcastle Herald reported on 3 February 2019 that the owners' engineers, Cardno, had by then declared 97 apartments safe to occupy. The Urban Developer wrote on 18 December 2019 that residents were going back about 12 months after the evacuation and that the works were due to finish in March 2020.

What the engineers found

Within days the state government appointed engineers to investigate and to publish what they found. Their interim report came out on 15 January 2019. The ABC named its authors as Professors Mark Hoffman, John Carter and Stephen Foster, and summarised their first conclusions: the building was structurally sound overall, it needed what the report called "significant rectification works", and the probable cause lay in "localised structural design and construction issues".

A second ABC article, on 16 January 2019, went through the detail. The significant damage was on levels 4 and 10. The professors effectively ruled out the environment and the materials as causes and thought movement in the foundations unlikely. They pointed instead to the junctions where precast concrete panels rest on hob beams, the short raised beams that carry them:

• the connections between beams and columns on levels 4 and 10 showed safety margins lower than the standards require;
• grout did not cover the whole joint under the level 10 hob beam, so the load sat off-centre;
• in one level 10 panel there was strong evidence that 20mm reinforcing bars had been used where 28mm bars were specified;
• the load on the structure rose as more apartments were occupied.

The final report followed in February 2019. In the ABC's words on 10 October 2026, it concluded that the cracks came from a combination of "design and construction matters, in particular changes made after the original design". The Urban Developer summarised the same report as finding that non-compliant construction and structural design were responsible.

The repair bill and who carried it

No final cost has been published. The last figures on the public record are those of December 2019. The Urban Developer reported then that Icon had outlaid an estimated A$31 million on construction and engineering works and on support for the residents of the 34 apartments directly affected. It also reported Icon's own statement that it had provided more than A$11 million in relocation expenses to owners and tenants, from hotels and rent to removalists and storage. The article does not say whether the second figure sits inside the first, so the two are not added together here.

Set against the tower's stated cost of A$128 million, the A$31 million estimate is about 24% of what the building cost to put up, and it dates from before the works were finished.

The builder paid first. Who bore the cost in the end was argued in court. According to the same article, apartment owners lodged a class action in July 2019 against the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, the state body that owns the land. The Authority brought cross-claims against Icon, Ecove and the development company; Icon, which blamed the design, cross-claimed against the engineer. How those claims were settled, and on what terms, is not public: the ABC says only that all owners have been fairly compensated.

What New South Wales changed afterwards

The first response came within a week: on 30 December 2018 the ABC reported four measures aimed at building certifiers, including yearly audits of 25% to 30% of certification work. The building commissioner came next. The office is held today by James Sherrard, appointed in October 2024, and it sits within Building Commission NSW, which describes itself as the regulator of the state's building industry.

Its main tool is the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020. The Commission's published guidance says the Act covers class 2 buildings, the multi-storey apartment blocks, together with class 3 buildings such as boarding houses and class 9c aged care homes. Inspectors can audit a building during construction and for up to 10 years after its occupation certificate. A developer has to tell the regulator when it expects to finish, at least six months before applying for that certificate. Three orders follow from those powers:

• a stop work order, where the way work is being done could cause significant harm, loss or damage;
• a building work rectification order, which requires the developer to remove or repair a serious defect;
• a prohibition order, which blocks the occupation certificate, the registration of the strata plan, or both, until the developer complies.

A serious defect, in the Commission's wording, is one in the common property affecting the structure, the waterproofing, the fire safety systems, the building enclosure or the services. Orders in force are listed on a public register. A companion law, the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020, registers designers, engineers and builders and sets out a duty of care.

The money side is the strata building bond. Under the Strata Building Bond and Inspections Scheme, which has applied since 1 January 2018, the developer of a strata building lodges a bond before applying for the occupation certificate. The scheme does not cover work insured under the state's home building compensation cover, which the scheme's glossary describes as applying to low-rise buildings of three storeys or less. An independent inspector is appointed within 12 months of completion, reports at 15 to 18 months and again at 21 to 24 months, and the bond pays for defects still listed in the final report. What is left goes back to the developer.

Decennial insurance is the fourth piece. The Strata Schemes Management Regulation 2016 sets out the rules for it: the policy cannot be cancelled by the developer, it must be issued before the occupation certificate is applied for, and the developer must say before the construction certificate stage whether it intends to take one out. A developer that has lodged a building bond does not have to supply the insurance certificate. The scheme's own page adds a limit on what it calls latent defects insurance: policies bought between 22 August 2022 and 24 October 2024 are recognised, and policies bought after that date are not accepted.

Twenty years against the statutory six

Every contract for residential building work in New South Wales carries warranties implied by the Home Building Act 1989: that the work is done with due care and skill, with good and suitable materials, in line with the law, and that a dwelling is reasonably fit to live in. Later owners inherit them, since the Act gives a successor in title the same rights as the first owner. The limit is time. Proceedings must start within six years of completion for a major defect and within two years for anything else, with a further six months when a breach shows itself in the last six months of the period.

A major defect, under the Act, is one in a major element, meaning a load-bearing part essential to stability, a fire safety system or waterproofing, that makes the building unusable or threatens its collapse.

The Opal Tower warranty belongs to a different family. It is not a right created by statute but an undertaking given to one building's owners, and its value depends on its wording and on who stands behind it. The Urban Developer reported in December 2019 that Icon was expected to offer an extended 20-year structural warranty on the rectification work. The ABC's report of 10 October does not say who gives the warranty now, what it covers or how a claim would be made. At 20 years it runs more than three times as long as the statutory period for a major defect, and twice as long as the regulator's own reach under the 2020 Act.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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