The NSW Building Commission will have boots on the ground in Wollongong permanently, the state's Building Commissioner David Chandler said.
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Mr Chandler visited Wollongong on Thursday for a lunch held by UDIA NSW at the City Beach Function centre, where he committed to setting up a base in the city.
"It's going to happen on my watch, too right it is," Mr Chandler said.
"Even if I have to dilute the metropolitan effort. Right now I haven't got the funding to do it but that's not an excuse for me not to do it. I've got to get something down here because having nothing down here is simply not viable."
In recent years the Building Commissioner has uncovered defects in a number of buildings in the Wollongong CBD and has started looking at construction issues at Shell Cove.
He said part the reason for an apparent rise in the number of building faults was simply because up until recently, the regulator hadn't been down here looking for them
"We've been out to lunch, we haven't been here," Mr Chandler said.
"Whenever you haven't got a regulator present you've got everybody making the rules up.
"We've got a public duty to be here. If I'm going to be the NSW Building Commissioner I have a contract with the public that says I'm going to do everything every day that I can to make their buildings trustworthy.
"I can't just simply say 'can't get there, can't do that'. I've got to find a solution and I will find a solution one way or the other because we've been out of business for too long."
This will come as good news to Wollongong City Council, which recently called for the Building Commission to set up a base in the Illawarra.
In his first years on the job, Mr Chandler focused on the bad side of the city's constructions, driven to "shine sunshine" on every aspect of the industry.
While that focus won't stop he was also planning to shine a light on the good work in city construction as well.
"We have spent the last four years getting everybody to face the reality," Mr Chandler said.
"We're now at a point where we can start to say 'what can we do that is a positive thing?'. I'm still the regulator and I've still got to be chasing down the bad stuff but just recently I've started doing posts on my social media on 'what does good look like'.
"I've got to call out the good because if you don't do that no-one will ever know what it looks like and they'll always think you're a crabby old bugger that is never pleased."
He said that when he started in the role, he saw Wollongong buildings from several developers where the basements "were an absolute disgrace" with leakage and poorly laid concrete.
"When I was down here just before Christmas I had a look at three new buildings that those builders were now finishing and they were exactly what I want," he said.
"What I'm planning to do when we set ourselves up down here is hold a 'Welcome to Town' function in one of their basements. I want to everybody to walk around and see what good looks like.
"If they get it right the first time it's a work of art, it's magic - and it costs no more. These guys say 'guess what? This doesn't cost us any more' and they're so pumped and they've got their mojo back."
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
