Popular Building Inspections and Reports 

How can it be that the Australian standards related to building work are not freely available to all domestic building industry participants including the end user, you the homeowner.
If a person was to visit a building site today and asked any of the tradies which Australian Standard applied to the work they are performing, its unlikely they could identify the relevant standard, let alone their awareness of whether the work they are performing complied with the standard or not!
Noting all building participants and others are required to pay an ongoing, annual fee to access the Australian standards and continual updates. Of course we argue ‘professional Building Practitioners and other should manage their standards subscription cost as a business expense’. It is safe to entertain the thought that the exorbitant ongoing cost of the standards retards industry players to access them. I am sure there are numerous home owners who would like to access them when they have
concerns about their building compliance?

On the other hand, a large degree of our residential construction work is performed by our ‘up and coming’ younger and often inexperienced tradies, using an apprentice for example as he/she is also a cheaper labour unit, will have very little awareness at all of the Australian Standards, let alone access to them to familiarise themselves and apply them to their own work. It would in turn be argued the upline carpenter-supervisor-builder should be responsible for all work being compliant to the standards and associated codes, and that is correct. Particularly in the price driven housing markets, history shows that upline responsibility chain is often ineffective in ensuring compliance. The issue then falls to the last chance of compliance check with the RBS Registered Building Surveyor, see preceding articles around that topic!
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My own years immersed in the building industry indicated to me very few players had access to or were familiar with the standards.
Some players might even deem the Australian Standards in the domestic building sector less important than other codes and regulations.
From a Building Consultant’s experience, I can advise, when a building project has fallen into dispute between a home buyer and a builder, then arrives at VCAT to attempt resolution, Compliance and reference to various Australian Standards features strongly in an Expert Witness’s Building Report Evidence to the Tribunal.
 

Further to, compliance to the Australian Standard is a regular feature in most other building reports that don’t proceed to VCAT, so its difficult to understand why the standards are given such little credence in the construction phase and so little attention to the construction compliance to them?

Noting the sample scathing reports in the previous section levelled at our various building regulators and questionable management of their budget spending, It is my opinion (which is not important at all) but you can draw your own conclusions, it’s fair to say making the Australian Standards freely available to all domestic building participants would encourage a greater compliance to them.

Other Sector Organisation who claim to ‘service the domestic building industry’ fall short in their ‘service’ by not providing free access to the Standards, Including the Housing Industry Association (HIA) and Master Builders Association (MBA)

As all of these organisations claim to have an interest in our building industry participants and builders performance

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Point of Unrestricted Access to The Australian Standards Could Include:

• Victorian Building Authority (VBA)

• Master Builders Association (MBA)

• Housing Industry Association (HIA)

• Victorian Managed Insurance Authority (VMIA)

• Domestic Building Insurance (DBI)

• Registered Building Surveyors (RBS)