Month eight. The owners corporation committee for a forty-unit building has a spreadsheet of thirty-one defects, a folder of emails to the builder, and a strata manager who is now forwarding each new one to a director at the building company because the site manager's phone goes to voicemail. The builder has not refused to fix anything. The builder has not said anything at all since June.
The committee experiences this as refusal. The builder, as far as anyone can tell, experiences it as nothing, because on their side none of it has a number, a date, or an owner. The project team demobilised in February. The emails go to an inbox that belongs to a project that no longer exists.
The builder did not say no. Nobody on their side was asked a question with a number on it.
That is the opinion, and it is an uncomfortable one for a committee that is angry, because it says the first fix is on the committee's side. Not because the builder is blameless. Because the thing that moves a builder in month eight is not a more forceful email. It is a record so specific that not answering it becomes the expensive option.
Think about what the director actually receives. A forwarded email, which forwards an email, which contains a resident's description of "water coming in near the balcony door in 12.04, has been happening since winter." No photo, or a photo as an attachment to the third email in the chain. No date it was first reported. No indication of whether anyone has been given access to 12.04 or whether the resident is away. Nothing they can hand to a trade. The honest internal response is "someone should look at this", and someone does not.
Now think about what the regulator asks when the committee finally escalates. When did you notify this defect, in writing, to whom? What access did you offer? What did the builder say? Is this a defect or is it maintenance? The committee's answer to all four is a search of three people's sent folders. That is the moment the eight months of frustration turns out to have produced very little.
Five things, in order, before anyone mentions a tribunal
Make every defect a dated written notice. Not an email about a problem. A record: photo with its capture time, the lot or the common area it belongs to, a description a stranger could act on, and the date it was sent to the builder, to a named person. The builder's obligation runs from the notice, and the notice is a thing you can produce or a thing you cannot.
Offer access and record that you did. The builder's standard answer to "you did not fix it" is "you would not let us in." It is sometimes even true; residents travel, lots are let, nobody has the key to the plant room. Record the dates offered, the lots, the contact given. On a register this is the thread on the defect, with the builder's own replies on it, or their absence.
Type each item before the builder does. The builder will say the dripping mixer is wear, the blocked drain is misuse, the cracked tile was the removalists. Sometimes they are right. A list where every one of thirty-one items is the builder's fault is a list nobody believes, including the regulator. Type each item as it arrives, Warranty or Maintenance, with the reason, and the committee argues from a list that already shows which items it has accepted as its own.
Keep both clocks in view. The contractual defects liability period, usually twelve months, and the statutory period in your state, which is usually longer and runs on its own rules. They are different clocks and the item notified in month eleven is in a different position from the one notified in month fourteen. We put the periods, by state and with the regulator for each, on one page because committees kept asking and the answer differs in every state.
Escalate with the record, not the story. Every state has a first step before the tribunal, a regulator or a dispute service, listed on that same page. What they ask for is the list above: the defects, when notified, the responses, the access, the photos. A committee that arrives with an export is having a different conversation from one that arrives with a folder.
The same register, with the committee in it
The reason this is hard is that at handover the register changed hands and changed form. The builder had a system, or at least a spreadsheet with the site manager's memory attached. The committee got an Excel export and a folder of photos, and started a new spreadsheet. The continuity broke at exactly the moment it was needed.
The alternative is for the register not to change. In IssuesId the builder's handover register and the building's own register are the same product. The committee or the strata manager takes the client seat: read-only, with the Client Defect Summary a click away. Residents get a printed QR card that logs them into their own portal with no password, so the month-three mixer in 12.04 arrives as a record against 12.04 with a photo and a date, instead of an email to the strata manager. Each item is typed Warranty or Maintenance as it arrives. It is issued to the builder, or to the builder's plumber directly if that is who it was, by email with a no-login link, and every email the defect sends sits on its audit trail with whether it was delivered or bounced. If the builder disputes an item, they dispute it on the record and the ruling stays on the file.
Month eight, the strata manager runs the Issued To report filtered to the builder: thirty-one items, oldest first, each with its notice date and what came back. That export goes to the director with a one-line covering email, and then, if it has to, to the regulator. It is very hard not to answer.
Month eight, run again
Same building. The committee took the register at handover rather than an export of it. Thirty-one items, each raised by a resident on a card or by the building manager on a walk, each with a photo and a date, each typed, each issued to the builder with the email on the trail. Eleven are Maintenance and the committee's own contractor has them. Twenty are Warranty. Fourteen of the twenty were fixed in the first five months, because the plumber got the email directly and the link opened the job. Six are open, the oldest since June, with three unanswered emails on it.
The strata manager sends the director a six-item export, not thirty-one, with dates. The director, who can now see exactly which six and exactly how long, finds that answering is easier than not. Nobody mentions a tribunal. That is the point of the record: not to win the dispute, but to make it unnecessary.
The short version is at what can an owners corporation do when the builder will not fix defects. The periods and the regulator for each state are on defects liability periods in Australia. This is general information, not legal advice; the contract and your state's legislation apply.