New Access Canberra team to identify building defects early and oversee private certifiers

Picking up building defects early and lifting the quality overall of construction in the ACT will be the goals of a new quality assurance team to be established within Access Canberra.

The ACT Government has opted to not bring certification of buildings in-house as promised in 2020, instead opting for a drawing-board-to-completion approach.

Sustainable Building and Construction Minister Rebecca Vassarotti said the developer licensing laws dealt with the conflict of interest issue, so the government believed this approach would achieve better results, particularly in preventing defects.

“There were concerns that just getting another group of people to do the same work wasn’t actually addressing that issue,” Ms Vassarotti said.

“This process, where we look at documentation and through the construction industry, is actually going to deliver better in terms of what the community is really looking for, and that’s about reducing defects and picking them up as early as possible.”

The government has budgeted for an additional four staff to join Access Canberra’s building team. They will be recruited and phased in over the next year for a 1 July start next year.

Ms Vassarotti said the team would comprise professionals such as certifiers and engineers who would begin at the documentation phase to ideally detect potential defects and design them out of the process.

They would also inspect sites throughout a build and provide oversight of private certifiers to ensure problems were identified and resolved during construction, not after.

Ms Vassarotti said certifiers who were engaging in poor practice would have nowhere to hide in this process.

She said defects cost consumers $50 million a year and took a huge emotional toll on property buyers.

“Actually ensuring that the buildings that we build, we get right, is something that across the industry is going to have really positive impacts,” Ms Vassarotti said.

“I don’t see this as an issue of people having disputes about what should happen or what should not happen.

“We’ve got really clear standards through the National Construction Code. We’ve got really clear standards about how buildings should be built. It actually ensures that the whole industry gets lifted up.”

The new team will focus on the more complex high-rise apartment buildings where issues are the greatest, expanding out to other residential buildings over time.

Ms Vassarotti said the new team would complement the government’s other reforms to the building industry over the past four years, including developer licensing.

“We’ve done a whole suite of work that’s really looked at ensuring everyone who’s in the accountability chain can be held accountable whether or not it’s engineers, property developers,” she said.

“We’ve done a lot of work in terms of increasing the standards, particularly in relation to energy efficiency and accessibility.”

Ms Vassarotti said the government was also looking at improving the Master Builders Fidelity Fund, including increasing the claims threshold from $85,000 to $225,000 and appointing a community representative.

ACT Owners Corporation Network president Gary Petherbridge said this new approach would need to be resourced adequately to work, particularly at the design phase.

“My only concern is Access Canberra’s past capability to address strata complex issues has, in most instances and for most issues, resulted in them passing it to ACAT for resolution,” Mr Petherbridge said.

“The history of Access Canberra doing anything in the strata area has been abysmal.”

Mr Petherbridge said the developer licensing laws might remove the conflict of interest issue, but he believed certifiers should be there to ensure owners were protected, not the developer “because the developer disappears two years after he’s finished with his building and got his money”.

“This other approach is doing something useful if it’s got the capability to reduce the defects in the first place by having better designs and peer-assessed design,” he said.

Mr Petherbridge said OCN had always pushed for the original engineers and architects to continue the detailed design of the building until the end of the project.

“They should be involved in supervising the implementation of their detailed design. It should not be left to a project manager working for the builder and often directed by the developer to find ways to cost cut with ‘innovative approaches’,” he said.

Master Builders ACT also called for the new team to be well-resourced, suitably qualified and experienced, flagging concerns about time delays and extra costs.

Acting CEO Ziad Zakout said defects should be identified and dealt with as they arise.

“This is the role of all stakeholders in the building process, including but not limited to the certification process,” he said.

“The ACT Government needs to ensure that quality will come from the review of all aspects of building works, not just certification.”

Property Council ACT Executive Director Gino Luglietti welcomed efforts to bolster confidence and transparency in the building and construction industry but urged more consultation to get the desired outcomes.

“Without genuine engagement and dialogue between regulators and industry, it’s difficult to understand how these changes will work in practice,” he said.

“New regulations should be evidence-led, subject to review, and must strike a balance between robust consumer protection and avoiding unnecessary impacts on our sector’s capacity to deliver well-built homes at scale, especially at a time when they are needed most in the ACT.”