Constructing Building Integrity examines how ethical and professional standards can be raised in the residential apartment sector. Recent incidents in a number of countries, culminating in London’s Grenfell Tower inferno that claimed 72 lives, have highlighted systemic failures in the building industry’s professional and regulatory standards frameworks. These disasters raise serious questions over how consumer confidence and public trust can be improved when outcomes for multi-level, multi-owned apartment buildings remain sub-optimal.
To address this issue, the book explores how cross-professional interactions, regulatory oversight, public accountability, and the ‘integrity systems’ that govern individual professions' ethical and professional standards can be strengthened to enhance professionalism and improve consumer outcomes.
Focusing primarily on Australia but with wider relevance, the book draws on interdisciplinary research and insights from academics and industry experts. It discusses how integrity system components function and interact, how ethical risks and challenges impede their effectiveness, and what additional mechanisms can strengthen them. It provides timely guidance for built environment students, industry professionals, regulators, and businesses active in the sector on how product quality and professionalism can be enhanced across the life-cycle of residential apartment buildings.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction. Part 1: Introduction and Background. 2. Owners, Investors, or Consumers?. 3. Key Tensions in Professional Ethics: A Typology. Part 2: Ethics and Governance of Individual Professions. 4. Ethical Tensions and the Architectural Profession. 5. Integrity Issues Facing a New Profession: The Case of Australian Building Surveyors. 6. Codification of Values and Goals: The Case of Residential Construction Managers. 7. An Emerging Profession and an Evolving Regulatory Landscape: Ethical Tensions and Strata Managers. Part 3: Cross-Professional and Integrity System Component Interactions. 8. Professionalisation and the Role of (Self- and Meta-) Regulation. 9. The Role of Professional Associations in Influencing Standards in the Australian Building Industry. 10. A Comparative Analysis of the Integrity System Frameworks for Real Estate Agents and Property Valuers in Australia. 11. The Central Role of the Construction Manager to Influence Professional Integrity in the Residential Sector. Part 4: Systemic Approaches to Mapping Professional Integrity. 12. Towards Integrity Systems – Capturing the Factors that Influence Professional Integrity for Construction Managers, Engineers, Architects and Town Planners. 13. Investigating Integrity [1] – A Bayesian Network Approach. 14. Investigating Integrity [2] – An Actor-Network Approach. Part 5: Reforming the System. 15. Government’s Leadership Role for Housing Sector Policy Reform. 16. Regulation of Building Professions. 17. Timely interventions: Anticipatory Governance Mechanisms for Acting in Advance of Opportunistic Behaviour. 18. Conclusion.
About the Author :
Katja Cooper is a Research Fellow at Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law (IEGL) in Brisbane, Australia. Her current research focuses on professional ethics in the construction and aquaculture industries and her previous work examined a range of Australian domestic and foreign policy issues including refugees/asylum seekers, transitional justice, extended nuclear deterrence, and Australia–China relations.
Hugh Breakey is Deputy Director and Principal Research Fellow in moral philosophy at Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law in Brisbane, Australia. Hugh’s work spans the philosophical sub-disciplines of political theory, normative ethics, applied philosophy, and legal theory.
Charles Sampford (DPhil Oxon 1986) is Foundation Dean of Law, Research Professor in Ethics, and Director of the Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University. He is also a barrister and Victorian Parliamentary Integrity Adviser. He has written over 160 articles and chapters and has completed 34 books and edited collections in ethics, governance, and law.
Peter Gow retired as Deputy Director General of Industry Regulation and Building Commissioner in Western Australia after a career in structural engineering, contracting policy and dispute resolution, and building industry reform.
Keith Hampson established and is CEO of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) and its predecessor, the CRC for Construction Innovation, which develops projects informed by industry partner needs, secures national funding, project manages the collaborative research, and oversees ‘research into practice’ initiatives.
