Regulatory priority: Practitioner capacity and capability

What we know:

• Practitioners are under constant pressure and must keep pace with industry, technological and legislative/standards (i.e. NCC) changes to remain compliant.
• The number of practicing and qualified practitioners in Victoria is not keeping pace with current and projected construction levels.

What we expect:

What we have done:

• Administered and participated in programs to boost building surveyor capacity and capability, most notably, the Building Surveyor Career Pathway program to create more career pathways for up-and-coming building surveyors and provide support for the future generation of the industry.

• Employed a Principal Plumbing Specialist to provide expert advice to support practitioners and industry on complex and significant plumbing matters.

• Introduced Australia’s first Code of Conduct for Building Surveyors that sets out examples of inappropriate conduct and establishes eight key areas of professional conduct that building surveyors in Victoria must follow.

• Employed a Principal Plumbing Specialist, Principal Fire Safety Engineer and Principal Structural Engineer to provide expert advice and support to practitioners and industry on complex and significant plumbing and building matters.

• Partnered with other co-regulators to run Build Aware campaigns to increase practitioner awareness of safety, environmental, building and plumbing compliance obligations in the construction environment.

• Conducted Practitioner Education Series (PES) masterclasses for plumbing and building practitioners to increase their knowledge and education on a range of topics including performance solutions, enforcement and design.

• Delivered annual Building Surveyors’ Conferences to assist building surveyors, building inspectors and other building practitioners to increase their knowledge, skills and capabilities.

• Introduced online exams for building practitioners to improve application processing times and make the registration pathway more efficient and accessible for practitioners.

• Regularly published media releases to generate public awareness on the importance of engaging practitioners accredited with us who are required to ensure their work complies with the relevant regulations, codes and standard to protect the health and safety of consumers.

• Continued to work on advancing practitioner capacity and capability, supporting existing and aspiring practitioners through their career development, making it easier for practitioners to do the right thing, focusing on stamping out risky practices, and supporting practitioners to follow the rules and providing details of our programs and work in our Annual Reports and disciplinary register.

• Issued regular updates via newsletter to keep practitioners updated on industry news as well as our activities and reporting.

• Released technical updates from the State Building Surveyor to keep practitioners and industry updated on technical issues, industry trends/alerts, updates on practice notes, guidance material, upcoming webinars and education opportunities.

• Set up a resource hub for building and plumbing practitioners that includes links to webinars, practice notes, industry updates, forms, templates and performance solutions.

• Continued to work on initiatives to resolve the issue of detached permits through a potential sector-wide shared solutions in partnership with industry stakeholders. These initiatives (page 15) include a pilot program to review permit files and recommended a pathway forward for consumers, preparation for the implementation of a Statutory Manager function, which seeks to address the most challenging detached permits, a roadmap for assessing current detached permits, reducing future risks and establishing a program to ensure improved management of old permits, improved building permit documentation and business continuity planning by building surveyors.

• Continued to assist practitioners from interstate who wish to practice in Victoria through the Automatic Mutual Recognition scheme and mutual recognition applications.

• Technology improvements (page 53) to enhance the digital experience and how practitioners and consumers interact with us through the implementation of a new licensing and registration system that removes paper-based forms and allows new interactive online forms (for applications, renewals, insurance, surrender, mutual recognition, etc.).

• Established an Industry Harms Consultative Committee (IHCC) (page 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:
  • Behavioural insights to reduce improper service penetrations which enabled us to increase awareness of the consequences of poor service penetrations and increase individual practitioner/tradesperson responsibility for compliance when carrying out service penetrations.
  • the education and professional competency of fire safety engineers which enabled the development of a pragmatic plan to transition from the current state of fire safety engineering and design in Australia to the required regulatory, education, accreditation and registration state to ensure a full and proper profession for fire safety engineers.
  • the nationally accredited construction, plumbing and services competency training packages, the findings from which supported our call to improve the skills and competencies of future graduates of plumbing qualifications and successfully advocated for changes to existing plumbing qualifications.
  • an innovative virtual reality training tool that could help plumbers and builders assess compliance of their work and increase consumer confidence.
  • recommendations for regulatory reform to ensure that the benefits of industrialised construction (including offsite manufacturing and assembly of building components that are transported to site for installation) can be realised while ensuring that consumers and building occupants enjoy a safe and compliant built environment.