I think more correctly the insurers of Fletchers/Skycity are taking the insurers of the waterproofing company to court
Politics 🗳️ NZ Politics
- Thread starter wizard of Tauranga
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NZWarriors.com
This is bad, because it's completely avoidable.
The Govt has a multitude of fiscal mechanisms to assist with funding of councils at a local and regional level.
Reducing funding offloads further costs to our sleepy townsfolk, when the coalition say they are concerned about the cost of living.
How to blow up your economy - Do what
2% contraction in the economy in 2024. Now that interest rates are going down, we'll trade houses amongst ourselves and call that economic growth. Lol.
That would depend on the insurance cover the waterproofing company has. I’d doubt they’d have enough coverage to cover the damage to the NZICC. Wouldn’t that then make the waterproofing company liable for the rest?
Given your background, could a business contract their way out of liability and only be liable only to their insurance cover?
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The second question is a little easier to answer (I think) - only if the person they contracted to signed a contract agreeing to that but (and this should be the answer to the first question) why would you as owner enter a contract where your potential losses were say $500m and agree that your contractor only needs a liability cover for say $250m.
My experience suggests that Skycity would have stipulated a contractors all risk policy with a limit sufficient to cover all potential losses - perhaps that should be foreseeable losses and in that is the rub. Were Skycity “smart” enough to foresee a loss of this magnitude?
- Thread starter
- #15,545
Standard insurance in the trades is $5-$10m. Never $500m. I think you are right it’s insurance vs insurance. Beyond that a limited liability company would have peanuts to pay out towards the cost. The company is probably in liquidation already (would be stupid to carry on trading when you’re about to be smashed).
@miket12, would there be an out for the contractors insurance that they could argue the design was at fault due to the flammability? It’s an outsized outcome for a potentially common accident. What happened if lightning struck the roof or a rat chewed through a wire in the flammable insulation, shouldn’t the whole place be designed to still NOT burn down? Seems a poor design fault on top of the accident.
$500m was to emphasise a point but having said that this was not a build of $5-$10m so the insurance requirements would be commensurate with the value of the job.
Why do you say in liquidation already?
That’s implying that they were at fault which is yet to be proven.
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- Thread starter
- #15,547
As an electrical contractor we were frequently working on buildings worth up to $100m+. The standard public liability requirement was $5m. There is a point where if you own a huge expensive building you can’t expect some lowly contractor to cover the whole place. It’s like driving a Ferrari, you have full insurance yourself incase the person that hits you isn’t insured enough.
Small business assume massive risk. Everyone working on White Island did best practice at the time and a natural disaster happens and they are all wiped out of business. Yes, in hindsight you would have done things different but everyone including govt departments didn’t see the risk.
As an electrical contractor that was huge on safety, but had guys working independently, all it take is one guy to make a mistake and a building burns down. The rules are written that there are never mistakes but that’s not the reality where people independently make decisions. As a business owner you can do everything in your power to stop it happen through systems and processes but it’s out of your control if an individual makes an individual decision. (We used heat guns and blow torches to heat shrink cable joins).
If I was the owner of the waterproofing company regardless of fault, I would be winding it up and starting a new company. The legal fees regardless of fault will probably be more than the guy makes in the life of the business. Better to wind up and move on.
This is a prime example of why we have limited liability companies where the risk assumed through employees actions is more than the worth of your entire business. It’s why I have a trust as well for mistakes that target the director personally. If we didn’t have this set up, and protection, nobody would do anything because it’s simply impossible to reduce all risk to zero. It’s like saying the road toll should be 0 if everyone just did things safely - theory not reality!
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- #15,548
Great news yesterday, with economic growth coming back strongly and recession coming to an end!
Looking forward to our rockstar economy returning after 5 years of economic instability.
Looking forward to our rockstar economy returning after 5 years of economic instability.
Bitumen or rubber-based membranes are flammable so it's the structure or substrate/ceiling underneath it that provides the passive fire protection because the vulnerability to the membrane is usually from underneath within the building and not above (if someone possibly left a heat source on top of the membrane). With the project still under construction when the fire occurred, most of the passive fire spread prevention would have been in place but little of the active fire suppression (i.e. sprinklers) wouldn't have been.
Also, most passive fire protection measures aren't there to prevent a building from being destroyed but to let the occupants escape before the fire moves from one area (called a fire-cell) to another. Most intertenancy walls are designed as 30/30/30 or 60/60/60 or 90/90/90 meaning it would take either 30 or 60 or 90 minutes for that fire element to have burnt enough for either the fire to pass through it into another fire area or, in the worst case, that amount of time for there to be a structural failure.
Fire on a roof isn't departmentalised into fire-cells so can spread quickly across the whole of the structure before it "finds" a weak point to burn downwards into the building.... and when the fire starts overnight, or during a lunch break, on the roof of a building before fire detection, prevention and passive fire spread items are in place, it can have disastrous consequences.
NZWarriors.com
- Thread starter
- #15,550
There is building construction insurance that covers the building site due to higher risk and all the protections not being in place.
Still think it was a design fault using straw bales in a roof area that you can’t extinguish before structural failure. Would the fire have fizzled out or been controlled if non flammable materials were used in that ceiling cavity instead?
I know when we have built commercial building all the materials had to be fire resistant even down to curtain materials.
It depends on when the fire materials are in place. In the case of the NZICC, the building wasn’t watertight so internal fittouts would still be underway such as holes for AC ducting would still be open between fire cells. Any firewalls or shafts using GiB Fyreline wouldn’t have been in place because the building wasn’t watertight until the roof membrane was completed. Fire protection measures around pipes where they penetrated from one fire-cell to another may not have been in place. Lift doors are fire protection measures and they certainly wouldn’t have been in place. Terminal vents for drainage stacks which penetrate through a roof can’t be fully fire rated until after roof membrane is in place.
The fire cladding to the access point of the roof can’t be installed until after the roof membrane is in place as the membrane continue up the wall and under the cladding. And even if the access point doesn’t require a fireproof cladding because it’s formed with either concrete panels or masonry, the fire door accessing the roof can’t be put in place until the roof membrane has been completed as the fire rated door sill is on top of the roof membrane.
Yeah things are really rosey out there…
NZWarriors.com
It's almost not worth engaging with this sort of delusion.
Is it a green shoot.... or just a weed?
Amazing that there have been 12 Governments since this ship struck a mine.... and none of them have even thought it was necessary to do a survey of the wreck despite them receiving official advice to do so. Potential environmental government sponsored inactivity at it's worst!!!
www.nzherald.co.nz
The $200m threat lying beneath the Hauraki Gulf
The RMS Niagara was sunk by German mines in the Hauraki Gulf in 1940.
NZWarriors.com
I'm sure he's putting those merger and acquisition skills he honed at Unilever to good use. Lol.Stuff
www.stuff.co.nz
Still poor viewing for national. Luxon will be hoping for something to come out of his trip to India
Possibly some good upside for wine, fruit and lamb exports. Perhaps not so good for dairy and beef.
- Thread starter
- #15,558
We’re back in action as a country, but of course it’s just the start.
Give it 6 more months of our farmers doing well again and lower interest rates and the country will have a much more positive vibe
Official stats showing the longest recession in 30 years has ended
. Delusion is not wanting the doom and gloom to finish! NZWarriors.com
No green shoots yet
It was just a data point yesterday that was fairly meaningless. However agree on the farmers, things going well for them. Elsewhere the general trend remains down.We’re back in action as a country, but of course it’s just the start.
Give it 6 more months of our farmers doing well again and lower interest rates and the country will have a much more positive vibe
Official stats showing the longest recession in 30 years has ended
