Page 875 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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While reforms have already begun as a result of improving the ACT building regulatory system’s summary of proposed reforms, transformation of the building industry will obviously take some time. It is important that we get this right across the long term so that industry practices and the regulatory system can support increased building activity while maintaining suitable construction standards.
We need to ensure that as the ACT continues to experience rapid growth our building regulator can respond to a need for increased services with more efficient regulation of the industry. The reforms are wide reaching and target all stages of the regulatory system, from training, licensing and design upfront to the construction process, through to resolving post-occupancy disputes. We have been working closely and cooperatively with the support of industry and other stakeholders to ensure that we are getting this right.
On 19 August 2017 the ACT government extended statutory warranties to cover buildings over three storeys to match those buildings that are three storeys and under. Other reforms include steps to prevent phoenixing or people shifting their operations to other existing licences instead of fixing defective buildings.
Changes have also given the building regulator and ACAT a broader range of options to use when things go wrong, such as the ability to condition licences and to use the licence as a more effective regulatory tool. It is important that we continue to assess the current regulations and make changes when required to ensure that our regulators have the right tools in their toolkit to ensure compliance.
The Construction Occupations Registrar can condition the licences of builders, restricting them to performing works only at a particular site, to help encourage compliance and that ensure licensees’ attention is focused on the project at hand. This has happened on two occasions. Recently the Construction Occupations Registrar made the decision to condition all licensed building surveyors to address the issues associated with an engineer who was responsible for numerous building defects.
The reform process to date has put industry on notice. Our reforms place clear obligations on licensees for quality control and require an industry-wide commitment to higher standards of work, training and education.
The ACT government has also recently introduced an examination for class C building licences, ensuring that those applying for licences have the appropriate knowledge of the Building Code of Australia. This building licencing examination process is planned to be rolled out to class B licence applications by July and to class A by the end of 2018. This is on top of the formal mandatory qualification and the requirement for a minimum of two years practical relevant building experience required before an application for a class A, B or C licence is accepted. An applicant for a class C builder licence must pass the class C builder licence examination with a pass mark of 80 per cent in order to be issued with an ACT licence. We will not apologise for setting a high bar to enter this industry. The examination is helping to ensure that those who are not capable of demonstrating an effective competency
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