Legislation on Upgrading Building Defects
When a building has tenants, it serves the long-term goal of having a high standard of asset preservation. This protects not only the value of investment but also provides satisfaction for those who see the building as their home.
Listening to clients will give a new perspective that resulted in the development of a premium maintenance service along with contract managing and transparent reporting. NSW Governance is aware that measures must be passed in the effort to have building construction.
In June 2020, two legislations were passed to better building regulations in the state: these were The Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (the Practitioners Act) and the Residential Appliance Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 (The Compliance Legislation). These two particular acts are the immediate response to the concerns of poor design and construction in a building.
Poor design and construction often cause repeated complaints and eventually unsatisfactory living conditions for owners of new lodgings in the last years.
Credibility and the protection of the building workers
The Practitioners Act refers to practitioners as defined in the legislation as “builders, designers, product manufacturers, professional engineers, project managers and others involved in the design and construction of residential buildings”. The implementation of this act also extends to other types of construction.
The Practitioner Act also suggests that most professionals and people hired to work for building work are to be registered with the NSW Department of Customer Service and should be “adequately insured” before going into building work.
In addition, this Act also introduce provisions such as:
- Applied to owners of which the construction is being built and to the subsequent owners of the land: The statutory duty to reasonably care to avoid a subsequent impact to a party for economic loss caused by defects to, or because of, that construction work.
- The property owner is entitled to damages and compensation if the practitioner breaches the duty of care.
2. Practitioners are also supposed to make compliance declarations to the department stating clearly the building work that they have undertaken and whether it falls under the standards of the Practitioners Act and other legislations.
The Compliance Act commenced on 1 September 2020 - with the main purpose of ensuring that developers of residential buildings cannot attend to construction that can leave serious defects or potential economic loss to the current and future owners of the dwellings.
Mechanisms of this act includes:
- The core element of a developer advising the Department of an occupation certificate within 6 months (but no more than 12)
- The Department will provide their own authorised professionals to undertake quality inspections before the new owners take possession of the building.
- Seriously defected work will be stopped and will prohibit the issuing of the occupation certificate.
These provisions hope to assist in the quality assurance of residential buildings and Owners Corporation, and should assure the building owners’ peace of mind.
Resources for this blog post:
Strata Choice: Building Defects - https://www.stratachoice.com.au/kb/building-defects/
Building Management - https://www.stratachoice.com.au/kb/maintenanceplanning/