nixjet

I’m on the SC of a small older block in Sydney. We had been using the same company for our AFSS for years. They weren’t overly expensive but were reluctant to answer questions when we queried a few items of overservicing. We still got our AFSS every year with no major issues. However because of the lack of customer focus and unanswered questions we changed companies.
The new company completed a full inspection and presented a report making sweeping recommendations and advising a number of critical breaches despite the records of the previous company stating otherwise.
The quoted works were substantial.
The new company wasn’t interested in the work of the previous company despite records of works being completed and simply told us that this was their interpretation of the regulations, that they were obliged to inform council of the breaches, here’s a quote and you have 30 days to complete otherwise you’ll be in breach.
We were further advised we were free to contract their recommended works to other providers but we would still need to pay for a reinspection and their interpretation of the work required under the standards could be different to others. They then had the tenacity to say that they would give no guarantee that council would accept their work against the schedule held by council and that further works may be required depending on how the standards are interpreted.
This just doesn’t seem right.
I feel we are being blackmailed into compliance over a creative interpretation of a standard to force a retrofit of a fire safety system that might be nice to have but is certainly not a requirement , wasn’t required when the building was built, or when the strata was set up or in subsequent annual fire inspections . It’s only been since the new company took over that we have gone from several years of full compliance to serious-breach-city and a program of fire safety works which will require a special levy to pay for and months of work.
The model where the certifier is essentially determining the interpretation of the standard, quoting for the work, excluding others from completing the work, then certifying their own work before handing over the precious AFSS is deeply floored. I have also found the strata management company to be quite willing to just accept whatever quotes come through without scrutinising what’s been done and not be concerned over how a building can go from years of compliance with no major problems to needing substantial retrofitting of compliant systems.
We engage the services of professionals and experts to advise in areas where we have no experience. We need to be able to trust them.
I would dearly like to recommend to the OC that we engage an independent 3rd party fire safety specialist to go through the work of our past company and that proposed by the new company and come up with a recommendation on what needs to be done to satisfy the minimum requirements. However I am worried about how much this would cost and the delay it would cause not to mention the threat to not obtaining our precious AFSS.
Any thoughts or ideas?