Regulatory priority: Fire Safety

What we know:

• Some passive fire controls are not implemented in accordance with the design of the building, resulting in residential and commercial buildings without compliant passive fire control systems.
• Some ESMs required for fire, life safety and health are not installed or appropriately constructed in a building to ensure adequate levels of fire safety and protection over the life of the building.

What we expect:

• Practitioners must understand and perform their work in accordance with relevant legislative requirements, the National Construction Code (NCC) and Australian Standards.
• Practitioners must work within the scope of their registration/licence and ensure their knowledge and professional development is maintained.

What we have done:

• Published quarterly findings from Proactive Inspection Program (PIP) and biannual Compliance & Enforcement Report that provides insights our activities including highlighting the most common non-compliance issues found during inspections such as fire separation, fire resistance and stability and lack of fire safety provisions.

• Conducted Practitioner Education Series segments on fire separation construction and essential safety measures.

• Completed a series of National Construction Code (NCC) roadshows across Victoria to ensure practitioners are up to date with the 2022 NCC changes including those related to fire safety, fire resistance of building elements including non-combustible products and provisions for determining fire hazard properties.

• Established and launched Victoria’s first ESM Enhancement Program which includes a set of initiatives to address public safety, enhance practitioner competency with wet systems and promote the importance of effective and compliant ESMs. This includes webinars, practice notes and fact sheets on ESMs and development of an ESM Responsibilities Framework.

• Established the Victorian Statewide Cladding Audit to lead the response to combustible cladding on behalf of the Victorian Government.

• Setup a resource hub for building and plumbing practitioners that includes links to webinars, practice notes, industry updates, forms and templates related to topics such as fire safety systems, service penetrations of fire rated and smoke proof walls and fire rated performance solutions.

• Introduced a new restricted class for fire service technicians to ensure they have the required skills and knowledge.

• Continued to focus on fire safety risks and undertook repeated and decisive action against practitioners who have approved or installed non-compliant or unauthorised combustible cladding and provide details of prosecution outcomes in our Annual Reports and our disciplinary register.

• Setup a resource hub for consumers that provides links to safety guides, building and plumbing regulations, complaints handling on issues related to ESM, fire safety and bushfire protection.

• Provided consumers with access to a practitioner register and disciplinary register and promoted these tools to ensure the use of registered and licensed practitioners throughout Victoria.

• Regularly published media releases to generate public awareness on the importance of the use of compliant, safe, non-combustible products on the external walls of a building) or products that pose a low fire risk during the build process (i.e. use of compliant timber framing).

• Released technical updates from the State Building Surveyor to keep practitioners and industry updated on technical issues, industry trends with the aim of improving the safety and efficiency of construction projects including fire protection and safety such as information on Essential Safety Measures Enhancement Program and updates on prohibition of the use of combustible cladding.

• Established an Industry Harms Consultative Committee (IHCC) (pg. 57) to provide a forum to enable ongoing dialogue with key industry stakeholders on the regulatory priorities as well as emerging harms, risks and issues in the built environment and to seek insights on approaches and opportunities to best address these.

• Conducted or supported research on:
  • fire safety protection in multi-storey buildings, fire safety of rendered expanded polystyrene (EPS) and routine servicing of wet fire protection equipment.
  • Passive fire protection defects in residential multi-owned properties
  • improving the registration, education, accreditation and competency of fire safety engineers.
  • fire safety risks associated with the installation of solar panels on the facades of multi-storey buildings.