The dollar is driving down quality and cutting corners is happening in detriment of building structure stability and finish.
This is the issue - cost cutting and a continual pressure on everyone in the construction process to reduce costs.
I'm in engineering, structural and civil design. To win any work we have to cut the guts out of our fees, to the point we're pricing stuff now simply to keep people employed and the doors open - there's no margin for profit on most stuff and the fee is about covering our costs.
Everyone wants designs that will reduce their construction costs, good engineering takes time, but no-one wants to pay for it.
We often quote stuff from preliminary architectural designs. We win the work, only to find later when we receive the finalised architectural the plans have been changed without any consultation with us, which impacts on the engineering design. We'll point out the new design needs more steel (as an example), but the response generally is the construction costs have been fixed, there's no allowance for changes, so find another way to make it work. Usually this means making compromises on the structure's integrity or performance, or reducing the factor of safety. Push this point and as engineers we're told we are too conservative, and it will be the last time we get to quote work with this developer or builder....
Third party certifiers sign off on the work because they also know that if they make too much noise, they won't end up on the preferred supplier list, plus if anything goes wrong it will be the design engineers that cop it first, anyways.
Talk with anyone in the construction process and it's generally the same story. Not many are making money, no-one wants to pay for quality work so naturally corners get cut. It's all about doing everything as cheap as possible.
Not sure who to ultimately blame for this mess, but it's been described by a few as the 'profitless boom'. There will be more building failures in time, without a doubt.
