Municipal Building Control monthly measures

Purpose

To establish a consistent, industry-codesigned statewide view of municipal building control activity that enables OSBS to monitor performance, identify risk, and support timely, evidence-based oversight of how statutory functions are exercised.

Overview

The Office of the State Building Surveyor (OSBS) is introducing monthly reporting to provide improved visibility of core municipal building control activities across Victoria.

The reporting focuses on key regulatory functions spanning investigation, enforcement, emergency response, and prescribed decision-making.

Collectively, these measures provide a balanced view of workload, flow, and how statutory powers are applied in practice.

Importantly, this reporting captures operational activity not currently visible to BPC/OSBS through existing data sources, and is not intended to duplicate existing reporting obligations.

Supporting material

Support materials, including definitions, process and workbooks, are available.

• Reporting worksheet
• Data Dictionary

A user-friendly OSBS reporting collection portal for Councils to report measures is being developed.

What Councils need to do

• Enforcement (investigations, notices, orders, legal actions)
• Emergency powers (safety-critical responses)
• Regulatory functions (e.g. Certificates of Compliance)
• Prescribed functions (e.g. Report and Consent and other non-enforcement decisions)

Reporting timeline

• Reporting will occur every month
• Email submissions by the 15th of each month using the Reporting worksheet
• A user-friendly OSBS reporting portal will be introduced as part of future continuous improvement.

Initial March Lodgement

Recognising that some measures require a point-in-time position at the end of the month, councils are not required to report these measures for January and February when initial capture is difficult.

These measures are ‘blacked out’ in the reporting workbook.

How the data will be used

The data will be used to:

• understand system-wide demand, flow and pressure points
• identify emerging risks and safety-critical activity
• support targeted engagement, guidance and escalation
• inform sector-wide capability and consistency uplift

This is not a compliance exercise, but a mechanism to support better system oversight and outcomes.

Data quality and maturity

Councils are expected to provide accurate and complete data where available.

Where a council is unable to report a measure, please submit with a self-assessed data maturity of '0 - Unable to report'

Where councils are unable to report against a measure, this is not treated as a compliance issue.

These signals of system maturity, capability and data readiness help to inform future support and uplift across the sector to guide OSBS support, monitoring and reporting.

Suggested process to prepare

To support readiness for monthly reporting, councils may wish to:

1. Identify data owners and sources: Confirm who is responsible for each data area (e.g. compliance, admin, pool/spa)
2. Map existing systems and records: Identify where relevant data is currently held (e.g. systems, spreadsheets, registers)
3. Align definitions to local practice: Review the data dictionary and confirm how local terminology and processes map to the required measures
4. Establish a monthly extraction process: Determine how data will be compiled each month (manual extract, report, or system query), particularly for initial submissions
5. Validate data prior to submission: Implement a simple internal check to ensure accuracy, completeness, and consistency
6. Plan for gaps: Where data is not currently captured, identify interim approaches or record as 'unable to report'.

This process does not need to be complex.

A simple, repeatable approach is sufficient to support consistent monthly reporting to us.

Support from OSBS

For all enquiries, please contact: Council.MBS.Support@bpc.vic.gov.au

All OSBS communications and updates will be coordinated through Council Support.