Opal Tower: The Full Story From Christmas Eve Cracks to Defect-Free, and What Committees Can Learn

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• Opal Tower is a 36-storey, 392-apartment building at Sydney Olympic Park. It was completed in August 2018.
• On 24 December 2018, a loud bang and cracking on level 10 led police to evacuate the tower and surrounding area. More than 3,000 people were moved out on Christmas Eve.
• A NSW Government investigation found that some hob beams (short concrete beams carrying precast wall panels) were under-designed, that joints had been only partly grouted, and that some concrete on level 4 was weaker than specified. The building as a whole was structurally sound.
• Owners spent months in hotels and short-term rentals. Some were out of their homes for close to a year.
• The owners ran a class action against the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, a NSW Government body treated as the developer. The owners corporation later ran its own case after its experts found more than 500 further defects.
• Everything settled in 2022. The Supreme Court approved the class action settlement but cut the litigation funder's share from 36.4% to 25% of the payout.
• The builder, Icon, and its parent Kajima reportedly spent more than $50 million on repairs. The building carries a 20-year structural warranty, well beyond the six years the law requires.
• On 10 October 2026 the owners cut a ribbon to mark the building as defect-free.
• The collapse scare changed NSW building law. It led to the Building Commissioner, the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 and the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020.

The building

Opal Tower stands at 88 Bennelong Parkway, Sydney Olympic Park, in Sydney's west. It was approved in 2015 as a major project, designed by Bates Smart and developed by Ecove through a company called Australia Avenue Developments. The builder was Icon Co (NSW), which is majority-owned by the Japanese construction group Kajima. The structural engineer was WSP Structures, and the precast concrete panels were made and installed by Evolution Precast Systems.

The land belonged to the Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA), a NSW Government statutory corporation. SOPA owned the site and arranged for the building to be developed on it. That detail later shaped the whole legal fight.

The building has 392 apartments, a childcare centre and retail space. When it opened, apartments sold for between about $800,000 and $2.5 million. Residents moved in during the second half of 2018. The strata scheme is Strata Plan 97315.

Christmas Eve 2018

On the afternoon of 24 December 2018, residents heard a loud bang. A crack had opened in the structure on level 10. Police were called at about 2:45 pm and, fearing a collapse, evacuated the tower. They also closed nearby roads and the Olympic Park railway station. Police said the building had moved by 1 to 2 millimetres.

More than 3,000 people were evacuated from the tower and the area around it. Some residents were allowed back in, but the building was evacuated again on 27 December. Over the following days, engineers found more cracking on other levels, including level 4.

Residents spent Christmas and New Year in hotels and short-term rentals. Icon paid for accommodation and meals. In early February 2019, it stopped paying for units that engineers had judged safe to reoccupy. Many owners stayed away much longer, because their units were damaged or close to the repair work.

What went wrong: the government investigation

The NSW Government asked three senior engineering academics to investigate: Professor Mark Hoffman, Professor John Carter and Professor Stephen Foster. They released an interim report in January 2019 and a final report in February 2019.

To follow their findings, you need to know one element of the design. Precast concrete wall panels at certain points sat on hob beams, short concrete beams that carry the panel's load into the floor structure. The cracking was concentrated around these hob beam and panel assemblies, in recesses in the facade called "garden slots" where the panels met structural columns.

The investigators found:

• Under-design. Some hob beam and panel assemblies, as built, were under-designed against the National Construction Code and Australian Standard AS 3600. That left the hob beams prone to failing by shear compression and bursting.
• Partial grouting. The joints between hob beams and panels had been only partly grouted. That raised the stress on the hob beams on levels 4, 10, 16 and 26.
• Weaker concrete. Some level 4 hob beams contained concrete of lower strength than specified, which the report said likely set off the major damage there.
• Design changes. The government summarised the cause as a combination of design and construction matters, in particular changes made after the original design.
• Overall soundness. Despite all of this, the building was found to be structurally sound overall, and the localised damage could be repaired. The investigators agreed in principle with the repair approach and said similar elements elsewhere in the tower might also need work.

Their recommendations went beyond Opal Tower. They called for independent checking of structural designs for major buildings, inspections during construction, and registration of engineers.

Repairs, relocation and living on a building site

Icon carried out the structural rectification, overseen by engineers engaged by the owners corporation. The major concrete repairs were done in 2019. Some residents who had been out of their homes for seven months returned in August 2019. One owner told the ABC she was out of her unit for 11 months. In December 2019 the ABC reported that a handful of owners still could not get back in.

Returning residents did not come back to a finished building. In mid-2020 the owners corporation chair, Shady Eskander, described living with more than 100 construction workers on site, drilling all day, and sometimes only one working lift.

The cost kept climbing. Icon's repair bill was reported at more than $30 million in late 2019 and $40 million by mid-2020. By the time the building was declared defect-free, Icon and Kajima had reportedly spent more than $50 million.

The financial fallout reached owners directly:

• Insurance. Eskander said the building's insurance premium rose to more than $1 million in 2020, up from about $100,000 in 2018.
• Finance. He said banks put "a zero" against Opal Tower units, so owners could not refinance or borrow against them.
• Rent and value. Investors lost tenants who no longer felt safe. In the class action, the owners' valuer put the total drop in value for group members at about $62 million as at April 2022.

The legal fight

Opal Tower produced several sets of proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court, all heard together.

Why the owners sued a government agency

In July 2019, owners Terry and Helen Williamson started a class action on behalf of everyone who owned a unit in Opal Tower on 24 December 2018, other than the developer and its related companies. Corrs Chambers Westgarth acted for them, and the litigation funder Augusta Ventures paid for the case.

The obvious targets were the builder and the developer. The owners instead sued SOPA, claiming breach of the statutory warranties in s 18B of the Home Building Act 1989. Those warranties promise, among other things, that residential building work will be done with due care and skill and in line with the plans and the law.

The reason was the definition of "developer" in s 3A of the Act, added in 2011. A landowner who arranges for residential building work to be done on its land can be a developer, and a developer owes the same warranties as the builder. Because SOPA had owned the site and procured the development, the owners argued it was liable. It was also a government body that could pay a judgment and would not go into liquidation, which was a real risk with builders and special-purpose developer companies.

Blame moves down the chain

SOPA then brought cross-claims against the developer company and its parent Ecove (as guarantor), Icon and WSP. They in turn claimed against each other and against Evolution Precast. In December 2019, court documents showed Icon blaming WSP's structural design for the cracking.

In June 2020, a new law opened another route. Part 4 of the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 created a statutory duty of care in s 37, owed by anyone who does construction work, including design, to owners and owners corporations. The duty applies to work done up to 10 years before the law started, so it covered Opal Tower. In May 2021, the class action was amended to sue Icon and WSP directly under it.

The owners corporation's own case: 500 more defects

In June 2020, the owners corporation stepped out of the class action and started its own proceedings against SOPA and Icon. Its independent experts had inspected the building and found more than 500 defects beyond the publicised structural damage.

The two claims were about different losses. Individual owners in the class action claimed the fall in their units' value, extra strata levies, inconvenience and personal losses. The owners corporation claimed the cost of fixing defects in common property, plus inspections, project management, insurance and legal fees.

Icon said at the time that it had held weekly meetings with the owners corporation and only learned of most of the new issues when the case was filed. It asked for access to identify and fix any "legitimate" defects. That exchange shows a tension most defect cases go through: the builder wants to fix things on its own terms, and the owners want independent evidence first.

Settlement, and a judge cuts the funder's share

On 19 May 2022, the class action parties and the funder signed heads of agreement to settle. The owners corporation's case and a separate dispute between Ecove's company and Icon settled at the same time. WSP settled with Icon, and its insurers paid part of the class action settlement.

A class action settlement needs court approval under s 173 of the Civil Procedure Act 2005. Justice Black gave it on 28 November 2022 in Williamson v Sydney Olympic Park Authority [2022] NSWSC 1618, and the judgment is worth reading for any committee thinking about a funded claim:

• The funder asked for a commission of about 26% of the settlement plus the cost of "after the event" insurance, which protects against an adverse costs order. Together they came to 36.4% of the settlement.
• When owners were signing up in early 2019, they had been told a typical funding agreement took around 30%, and their deal was presented as competitive. The judge found owners had not been told how much the insurance costs would add, or that the commission multiple could end up well above that figure.
• The judge approved the settlement but capped the funder's commission and insurance costs together at 25%.
• 383 group members had stayed in the class action. 341 had signed funding agreements, and a funding equalisation order spread the commission across everyone so the unfunded members did not ride free.
• The lead plaintiffs had spent more than 300 hours on the case, and the judge allowed each of them $20,000 for it.

The amounts the defendants paid are confidential. Both the ABC and The Urban Developer report that all owners have been compensated and all legal matters resolved.

Eight years to defect-free

After the settlements, the work shifted from court to the building. The owners corporation, Icon, the consultants and the original design and construction team worked through the defect list. Eskander later described that phase as collaborative, a long way from the litigation that came before.

Kajima had agreed in 2019 to give a 20-year structural warranty, against the six years that the Home Building Act provides for major defects under s 18E. The owners have called it an Australian first.

According to The Urban Developer, about 500 defects were fixed. The major structural concrete repairs were done in 2019, and the last minor items, such as painting planter boxes, were finished in 2025. In June 2026 the building won the Champion Award at the NSW Apartment Awards for Excellence. On 10 October 2026 the owners held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to declare it defect-free.

Eskander's summary of the lesson for the industry was that "quality needs to be there so that defects aren't".

Timeline

What changed in NSW because of Opal Tower

Opal Tower, followed by Mascot Towers in June 2019, put building quality at the top of the NSW political agenda. The main changes were:

• A Building Commissioner. NSW appointed its first Building Commissioner, David Chandler, in August 2019.
• The Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020. It created the statutory duty of care described above. From July 2021 it also required designers and engineers working on apartment buildings to be registered and to declare that their designs comply with the Building Code of Australia, and builders to declare that what they built matches those designs.
• The Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020. From September 2020, the Commissioner can stop work, order rectification, and block an occupation certificate for a building with serious defects. Developers must notify the regulator before they apply for an occupation certificate, so the building can be inspected.
• Building Commission NSW. In 2023 these powers were brought together in a dedicated regulator.

None of these laws stops defects altogether. They do make it far harder for a building like Opal Tower to reach occupation with a serious defect unseen, and they give owners a claim against the people who designed and built the building, not just the company that sold it.

Lessons for strata committees

1. Check your team before your legal options

Michael Teys of The Strata Professionals calls Opal Tower a textbook case and argues that a defect fight needs three things: a leader, an experienced adviser, and a defendant who can pay. Miss one and owners can spend years in court and still not get their building fixed.

At Opal Tower the leader was Eskander, who held 392 lots together for close to eight years. In a building that size, some owners want to sell, some want to sue everyone, and some want silence to protect values. Teys also credits his use of the media to keep the building in front of the public and politicians.

The adviser is the person who has run these cases before and can say who to sue, on what basis, in what order, and when to settle. Teys adds that the adviser must be independent. Someone who diagnoses your defects and then profits from fixing them is not on your side.

2. Get your own engineer from day one

The builder's engineers work for the builder. At Opal Tower the owners corporation had its own engineers overseeing Icon's repairs, and later its own experts inspecting the whole building. If your building has a structural scare, the committee should appoint an independent engineer straight away, even while the builder is doing the work.

3. Commission an independent defect inspection, and watch the deadlines

The publicised cracks were not the whole story. The owners corporation's experts found more than 500 other defects. A building with one serious failure often has others nobody has looked for.

Statutory warranty periods under the Home Building Act run from completion: two years for most defects and six years for major defects. Opal Tower was finished in August 2018, and the owners corporation filed its claim in June 2020. A claim that waits for the structural drama to settle first can lose the minor-defect warranty entirely.

4. Find the defendant who can pay

A judgment against an empty company is worth nothing. Many defect cases end with the builder in administration and the developer's single-project company wound up, leaving owners with a court order and a special levy.

Opal Tower's owners looked past the builder and the developer and found a solvent defendant in SOPA, using the "developer" definition in s 3A of the Home Building Act. Teys calls that partly luck. Most buildings are not on government land. But the method works anywhere: before you choose a target, ask your lawyer to map everyone who could be liable, including landowners, guarantors, designers and engineers under the duty of care, and check which of them can actually pay.

5. Read the funding agreement as carefully as the claim

The litigation funder made the Opal Tower class action possible. Its terms also nearly took more than a third of the settlement before the court stepped in. When comparing funding offers:

• Ask for the total expected deduction as a percentage of a likely settlement, including commission, insurance premiums and any other costs, not just the headline rate.
• Ask how the commission is calculated. A multiple of the funder's outlay grows as the case gets longer and more expensive.
• Ask who pays for after-the-event insurance and whether that comes on top of the commission.
• Get independent advice on the agreement before owners sign.

Courts can cut excessive deductions in a class action. An owners corporation that signs a funding deal for its own claim may not have that protection.

6. Keep owners informed and together

Defect cases take years. Owners sell, tenants change and committees turn over. Opal Tower's owners formed a group to choose lawyers and a funder, interviewed many firms, and kept a legal subcommittee working with the lawyers. Regular, factual updates stop rumours and keep the owners behind decisions they will eventually have to fund or vote on.

7. Budget for the side effects

The repairs were not the only cost. Insurance premiums rose tenfold, banks would not lend against units, and investors lost rent. The owners corporation also paid for inspections, project managers and lawyers long before any money came back. Committees with a serious defect need an admin fund budget that allows for this, and owners should expect special levies while a claim runs.

8. Ask for more than the law requires

The 20-year structural warranty came from negotiation, not from the statute. A defendant who wants to restore its reputation may agree to things a court could not order, such as a longer warranty, a defined scope of works signed off by the owners' engineer, or a commitment to fix items found later. Put them in writing in the settlement.

9. Close it out properly

"Defect-free" should be a documented sign-off, not a feeling. Keep a register of every defect, the agreed fix, who signed it off and when. That record matters to buyers, valuers, lenders and insurers, and it is what turns a notorious building back into one people want to live in.

If you are buying into a newer building

Opal Tower became a sought-after address again, but its owners went through eight years to get there. Before buying into a building less than about ten years old, check the strata records for defect reports, expert reports, legal proceedings, special levies, and correspondence with the builder. Ask whether the building has an occupation certificate under the newer NSW regime, and whether any rectification orders have been issued.

What UnitBuddy tracks

UnitBuddy keeps a building's defect register, expert reports, photos, builder correspondence and legal advice in one place, each dated and linked to the part of the building it relates to. Committees can track warranty deadlines, record when each defect was reported and fixed, and give owners regular updates without starting from scratch every meeting. When the committee changes during a long claim, the history stays with the building.

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Opal Tower is remembered for the Christmas Eve evacuation. The more useful story for owners is what happened next: an investigation that found the cause, a solvent defendant, owners who stayed together, a court that protected their settlement, and a builder that in the end did the work. Most buildings will not get every advantage Opal Tower had. They can still get the leadership, the independent advice and the paperwork.

Sources and further reading

• Sydney's Opal Tower officially declared defect-free eight years after mass evacuations, ABC News (10 October 2026)
• Opal Tower: A Textbook Case in Fixing Serious Defects, Michael Teys, The Strata Professionals (16 October 2026)
• Opal Tower's $50m Fix Comes Full Circle After Eight-Year Saga, The Urban Developer (October 2026)
• Williamson v Sydney Olympic Park Authority & Ors [2022] NSWSC 1618, Supreme Court of NSW (28 November 2022)
• Opal Tower unit owners launch multi-million-dollar class action against NSW State Government, ABC News (29 July 2019)
• Opal Tower builder blames engineer for cracks, $30m repair bill, ABC News (4 December 2019)
• Opal Tower unit owners launch Supreme Court case after 500 new defects discovered, ABC News (29 June 2020)
• Opal Tower "overall structurally sound", says final report, Architecture & Design (2019)
• Opal Tower: who can sue and under what policy?, Kennedys (2023)
• Home Building Act 1989 (NSW), NSW Legislation
• Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (NSW), NSW Legislation
• Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 (NSW), NSW Legislation

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