James Davidson of JDA Co., is an architect who has been specialising in disaster-resilient retrofits and architectural design solutions for over 20 years. Davidson is joined by Nick Wiesener, head of Disaster Management Australia and insurance advisor to national government.

This interview, presented as a four-part series, documents their discussion covering government policy, social, economic and insurance issues surrounding the response to the issue of flooding to homes in Australia, and culminates in recommended building solutions.

This frank discussion aims to add to the wider dialogue among the architecture community in New Zealand, and further highlight the urgent need to take action in defending our homes and livelihoods against climate change.

Flood resilient architecture (Part 3): The Australian response

Adrienne Miller (AM): What is the typical budget you’re working within for a wet-proofing retrofit or building elevation?

James Davidson (JD): For most of the work we’ve been doing, we have a budget of AUD $50,000 for a retrofit and AUD $100,000 for a raise. Buy backs are actually at market value pre- and post- flood. We were involved in discussions around eligibility and $50,000 doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. We chose that figure four years ago when we started the Brisbane City Council programme, but with supply chain issues and labour shortages, I’m thinking around the AUD $70,000 mark is more realistic these days and maybe AUD $120,0000 for raising.

AM: How do you verify the safety of structures after significant amounts of water have passed through, and how you verify compliance with code?

JD: It’s all within the national construction code. None of this is actually any different to what a normal build would entail. It’s generally got a bit of extra waterproofing, which you don’t need a water proofer to do — a painter can do. I’m assisting the Australian Building Codes Board [ABCB] in reviewing the Australian standard for flooding at the moment because the standard for flood here covers life safety.

So, it’s all about not letting the building fall over. If we see any cracking when we go into homes, we’ll immediately get a structural engineer in there to have a look at that.

The work that I do focuses on non-structural elements, which is generally more significant in terms of the cost to the family. As part of the Resilient Homes Fund — we’ve done a full audit of all the Australian standards that go into each of the strategies that we use. We’ve had building certifiers looking at that for some time and they’re involved the whole way through.

What we don’t have is a code which draws upon the work that we’ve been doing to create a standard for linings with waterproofing which could become an official system that could then be replicated.

However, the work we’ve been doing with Johns Lyng is about putting those kinds of systems in place. Every day, people from my office are talking to Government representatives who are looking at advising home owners in building back better. I proposed a new standard years ago and I was told it won’t happen unless we got a cost-benefit analysis done, which we did.

AM: The classic answer. The business case has to be done first.

JD: And it came back — after hundreds of actual built works — somewhere between AUD$5.80 and $8.50 for every dollar spent. So the benefit is there. It’s just getting the political will to change or to amend the code to suit flood-prone areas. Once that happens, insurers will be mandated to build back better themselves. We won’t have to keep talking to them. They’ll just have to do it.

AM: The tendency is to kick the can down the road and only pay out the bare minimum while simultaneously acknowledging they may have to pay out more later. How have you gotten around insurers building back the same and no better in Australia? 

JD: This is where Nick and I kind of ‘tag-team’, because Nick has the relationship with the Insurance Council, which has been super helpful. His involvement led to the Insurance Council being part of the discussions with the Resilient Homes Fund here in Queensland. So we now have had one of the insurers (RCVQ) building back better.

I’d like them to go even further and offer premium relief, because we’ve achieved premium relief on a number of the private works that I’ve been doing. One of our clients received a premium renewal notice for AUD$18,000 in January (2023) and through our challenging it was reduced down to $5,000 based on resilience worth, which took off a lot of pressure. So Nick’s working up the chain — I’m just feeding him information. So it is happening but we do need the building code to change.

Nick Wiesener (NW): Yes. To bring things back to New Zealand, Auckland’s certainly going to flood again and there’s a great opportunity now for New Zealand to invest in risk reduction to minimise the economic and social harm from future events. However, Government does need to act quickly on this. It’s not something that you can wait for six months, 12 months down the track and then start incorporating resilient materials or funding for resilient materials.

Because, as we’ve seen in Queensland, we’ve got homes where insurers have gone in just recently and done repair work, they’ve put in plasterboard and now Government’s coming in and ripping out all of that newly-installed material to put in flood-resilient materials. So the opportunity to really capitalise on a resilience programme is quite small, which is why we’re trying to advocate and promote for this to move forward.

In terms of how these types of programmes can operate, we advocate for bringing in a managing contractor, because if funding’s just made available to the individual, there’s no guarantee that money is actually going to be invested in flood-resilient materials. Or, if it is, it may not be invested in the right way. For a programme like what James has developed to be successful, you really need to have a systematic approach to incorporating flood-resilient materials. It’s no good, just coming in and putting in FC sheeting when you’ve still got insulation sitting behind the walls and you’ve got cavities where water can sit. So you need to do it in a methodical way when you go into that property.

In terms of homeowners who have insurance, and the insurer is doing the repairs, that is becoming quite complicated. We’re having discussions with Queensland Government at the moment around how to try and make that work. One option is that Government provides the funding direct to the insurance builder. So the builder that’s been appointed by the insurer, they may have had a scope of work for AUD $150,000. Someone like James or I then come in and do the cost-analysis and realise that to replace the materials with flood-resilient materials may increase costs by 20% and then that’s a contribution that sits in on top. To actually make that change, it can be complicated.

Ideally, you would get the insurers buy-in early in the programme, but based on what we saw in Queensland, it can take eight months of negotiation with the insurers to get them on board. Whereas, if a homeowner had taken a cash settlement and was doing the repair themselves, they could access that cash directly from Government.

AM: So what you are saying is getting insurers on board at an early stage as well as governmental involvement are needed to build back better. Can you provide some scenarios you’ve been witness to where the issue is mishandled by insurers?

JD: We’ve seen insurers come in and rip out resilience works and then deny a claim. That’s the crazy thing. And we’ve also seen cases where the work’s ripped out, put back in, and then we’ve come in and bought them back. So the insurer’s recognition of flood-resilience is critical in building back better. Also, when they go into a property — because normally it’s chaos — they sometimes send teams in ripping and stripping who likely haven’t been educated as to what they’re looking at.

We’ve actually had flood-resilience clients resisting those very crews and locking the front door so they can’t come in to do the job. They rock up, knock on the door, say: “We’re here to strip out the damage” and they’re like “Please don’t do that, you don’t need to”. And it’s “Oh, but this is our job”. And then three days later, they’ll be back again. So we’ve had people literally defending flood-resilient materials.

AM: There’s talk in New Zealand about blanket prohibitions on building in certain areas or reinstating buildings using resilient materials in locations deemed vulnerable to extreme weather events. How do we best deal with this to avoid the public bearing the costs of a subsequent event, if the risk assessment done by the homeowner is actually incorrect? How do you delineate between public and private costs here?

JD: The whole idea of voluntary home purchasing is a problem I think. Because we are seeing — as I said before — people choosing to stay in the path of risk. I feel we need to have stronger political will around saying, “Look, guys, this is actually a problem. We cannot leave you here for these reasons”. When we want to put a motorway through, we just relinquish however many homes. So why can’t we do the same sort of thing for flooding?

AM: There’s a discussion that’s about to happen here in New Zealand surrounding compensation for homeowners in coastal and riparian zones and along overland flood paths, which we’re calling ‘managed retreat’. Does Australia have something like this in place?

JD: Yes, and I think there’s over a couple of hundred that have been bought back in the last few months with 2000-odd homes in New South Wales still on their list. The discussion around managed retreat is happening presently, and the managed retreat of homes has already started in Australia.

A lot of people are happy to do it, but the problem is those people who hold out and don’t do it. And then the property gets sold on and a young couple might buy that. The real estate industry is a big problem here [In Australia], in that they twist the story somewhat to get a sale and then people find themselves flooding when they were told by the agent that it would never happen again. That’s why the resilience works are a bit of a band-aid to allow us to buy some time.

AM: Time for better planning. And that better planning, in your opinion, would include some no-go zones. Do you see it as a stopgap measure to provide enough housing stock to get people back into homes until better decision making can be made at a public planning level?

JD: That’s right. And the proper education as to why. For example, there was a 99 year-old war veteran that I did a consult for out at Rock Lee whose wife had dementia — she was 93, and he was looking after her as her carer. His house was a target for buy back and his only fear was being kicked out immediately because where were they going to go at that age?

NW: If I could comment on that. All developed countries with high levels of insurance deal with similar issues where there’s a lot of expectation on Government to look after or to be the stopgap for people. In regard to natural disaster risk, there’s a great example in Canada where there was a community affected by flooding a number of years ago.

The government stepped in and said, “Okay, if you don’t have insurance, we’ll support you this time, but this is the last time. And from here on in, if you flood again and you haven’t covered your own risk, there’s not going to be any further financial support from the government”. That created a bit of a stir at the time but it was putting their ‘foot down’ and saying if you were not assuming some of the risk yourselves, then government isn’t going to support you in the future.

The challenge is that governments always like to step in and provide support when people are in need, but in doing so, they are reducing people’s own assumption of risk. It’s a challenge that we’re constantly seeing in Australia and you see through media and or through marketing and public information, governments trying to move the needle on that and put some of that risk back onto the homeowner, or that assumption of risk back onto the homeowner.

AM: So where there’s an assumption of risk by an existing homeowner, or by a homeowner coming into a property with full knowledge of the flooding scenario, how do we ensure that there’s transparency for future owners?

JD: We’ve been working on that with the State Government programme and we worked on it previously with the Brisbane City Council programme where there is a notation on every property with a flood wise property report that’s produced. Included is a little notation that says this this property has been through the Flood Resilient Homes programme or the Resilient Homes Fund.

If you’re the owner of the property or the future owner, you can actually assess the reports that were done for that property and you could download the outcomes report, which actually details which materials were put into the home and to what level of flood resilience — whether it was, say, a 1%, AEP event (which is the old ‘one-in-100-year’), or only a 20% or a 5%. And so the idea was that that information is also passed on to the [Australian] Insurance Council as well, so that there can be a broader record of that kept against the property.

Read: Flood resilient architecture: Part 4 - The New Zealand response