Structural Engineering in Western Sydney
TRSC covers Western Sydney from the Sydney office at 146 McEvoy Street, Alexandria NSW 2015. There is no separate Parramatta office. Behnam (Ben) Vakhshouri, PhD, Principal Forensic Engineer, leads investigations across Parramatta, Westmead, Blacktown, Mount Druitt, Penrith, St Marys, Liverpool, Fairfield, Bankstown, Auburn, Campbelltown, Camden and the growth corridor. He is FIEAust, CPEng and RPEQ, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Technology Sydney. The head office remains at 110 Petrie Terrace, Brisbane. NSW design declarations under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 are made by Lachlan Pagan, who holds NSW structural registration.
Western Sydney is a different building stock from the CBD. Parramatta and Westmead have commercial towers, hospitals and campus buildings, many with post-tensioned slabs and deep basements. The M4 and M7 corridors are warehouses, factories and distribution sheds: portal frames, slab joints, and cladding that takes storm and vehicle impact. The residential stock is houses, townhouses and mid-rise apartments on the Cumberland Plain. Much of Blacktown, Penrith, Liverpool and Fairfield sits on reactive clay. AS 2870 site class controls how a slab was meant to behave. Gardens, leaking pipes and cut-and-fill pads change the soil moisture, and the usual result is stepped cracking, slab heave and doors that jam. An investigation has to separate shrink-swell movement from a construction defect before anyone specifies underpinning. Seismic hazard for the Sydney basin under AS 1170.4 is a Z-factor of 0.08, higher than Brisbane. That matters for older unreinforced masonry in Parramatta and for pre-code industrial frames. Wind is Region A2 under AS/NZS 1170.2, non-cyclonic, with exposure set by terrain rather than a cyclonic region. Ben has more than 20 years in structural design and technical leadership on water, wastewater and civil infrastructure, including Sydney Water treatment plants, reservoirs, pump stations and pipelines, and defence, industrial and commercial structures. Forensic and seismic assessment, and reinforced and post-tensioned concrete, sit inside that practice.
NSW building work on regulated buildings is under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 and, for apartments, the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020, administered through Building Commission NSW. Declared designs are lodged on the NSW Planning Portal by a registered design practitioner. TRSC NSW design declarations are made by Lachlan Pagan, who holds NSW structural registration. Investigation reports for existing buildings, insurance and disputes are a separate task from a design declaration. Strata disputes sit under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and the Home Building Act 1989. NCAT expert reports follow the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 2005.
Western Sydney site attendance is arranged from 146 McEvoy Street, Alexandria NSW 2015. There is no Parramatta street office. Document review is supported from Alexandria and from the Brisbane head office. Timing depends on access and the scope.