Regulation of building professions

Building professions work under often-complex combinations of self- and statutory regulation. Current quality issues with multi-storey, multi-owned apartment buildings suggest there is room for reform. Professional associations are usually organised nationally. Statutory registration and control of occupations is a power of the states and territories in Australia, and not the Commonwealth Government, and is neither comprehensive nor nationally consistent. Each state has a different suite of registration, statutory requirements, and contracting provisions for the building sector. Some of these are not aligned to the inherent and revealed problems in multi-storey, multi-owned apartment buildings. There is a strong drive from industry for national registration of building professions. The National Registration Framework (NRF) gives a nationally consistent basis for registration of building production occupations which could be extended to cover the post-occupancy occupations also examined in this research project. Automatic mutual recognition allows for an individual to be registered in one state and lawfully do work in any state. This chapter examines how the new principles in the NRF and automatic mutual recognition can be applied to occupational registration across all the building professions in association with lighter forms of regulation such as mandating standard-form contracts and industry-led reforms through Centres of Excellence.