Page 4570 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 October 2010
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support the potential changes to licence holders to limit the number of simultaneous constructions in the early years. We support looking at reforming the licences and instituting a system of continuing professional development.
The effective supervision working group had a lot to do, and it raised a number of issues, including there being a number of significant buildings which are complex or non-standard where it is felt that builders often did not have sufficient skills to construct. I note that the need for increased supervision, which is what this group was talking about, has, to some extent, been forced upon developers and builders by the changes to the development application part of the legislation. Nominated licensed builders, we believe, must be present to supervise overall development.
It is reasonable also that nominated engineers be included in the application for the larger, more complex buildings because it is not reasonable to expect that building certifiers for the larger and more complex buildings should be able to check all critical aspects of the problems. A significant increase in regulated, certified inspections is needed, and I am glad that ACTPLA is at least doing some of that.
I also believe that the significant increase in auditing by ACTPLA is needed. This is one where ACTPLA auditing is largely paper based, not actually going out on site. I believe this is for financial reasons but I do not think this is good enough. Auditors have to be out on site.
I am very pleased with the potential change so that it will be clearer that owners are engaging certifiers themselves rather than engaging them through the builder. But given that most of the problems are in multi-unit developments, in most cases the developer will be the owner during the period of construction rather than the eventual owners. So I think that this change, while worth while, is likely to be fairly ineffectual because of that reason.
Obviously I am supportive of the changes to give better complaints processes, better quality control processes in government procurement, the potential for better supervision of jobs of a certain size or complexity and potentially even reviewing the Building Act. I note that there is obviously, at the very least, confusion about the role of the Building Act, given that ACTPLA is going to have to issue fact sheets on this. I think that this really is an issue.
Most people would believe that the Building Act would cover basic quality issues such as water penetration into living areas. However, in a number of instances ACTPLA has felt that this is not the case. So I am very pleased that they are putting out a fact sheet on what is covered by what bit of regulation but I do wish to say that we need to look at the regulations as well, particularly given that in apartments the actual owners tend to be second owners rather than, as I said, the first owner who will be the developer.
So we get to the situation that the only thing left for the second owners, the eventual substantive owners, is formal adjudication through the court system, which is both time consuming and costly. Also they generally need a well-functioning body corporate because they will be put forward by members of the body corporate, and
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