Queensland’s Safer Buildings website was attacked by an unknown party on Friday, as the deadline approached to register buildings that may have combustible cladding.
According to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC), the website was “aggressively probed”, with someone clearly trying to disrupt the service in the face of the deadline.
Many developers and building owners waited until Friday to register their buildings, with the website receiving submissions every 30 seconds in the hours up to the 12am deadline.
Despite the attack, submissions were uninterrupted, and over 20,000 buildings have now been registered.
However, Strata Community Association Queensland president Simon Barnard has argued that the deadline should have been delayed, and that more than 4,000 buildings may have missed the deadline and be inadvertently forced into the second stage of the audit.
QBCC commissioner Brett Bassett says the organisation is still considering reporting the attack to the police.
Building owners will be held accountable if combustible cladding is found on their building and the audit process “[can]not be circumvented”, adds Bassett in a comment to the Brisbane Times.
According to the QBCC, 68 percent of the buildings registered online have already been cleared after the first stage of the audit.
The next stage will ask more technical questions, and the third stage will require a fire engineer to prepare a risk assessment and determine whether rectification is needed.
It is estimated that approximately 10 percent of the buildings registered will have been built with the same flammable cladding as London’s Grenfell Tower. By this estimate, at least 2,000 buildings built from 1994 to 2004 could need rectification work.
Image credit: strata-loans.com
