NSW Fair Trading has completed 87 building audits, which targeted some of the State’s riskiest projects, to ensure residential apartment buildings were constructed in line with the Building Code of Australia and free from defects.
Minister for Better Regulation, Kevin Anderson said that, following Fair Trading’s recruitment of 30 additional building inspectors, it was on track to complete 200 occupation certificate (OC) audits by the end of next year.
“We have set ourselves an ambitious target of 200 audits that we are well on our way to exceeding, thanks to the hard work of the Building Commissioner and Fair Trading’s inspection teams,” Mr Anderson said.
“The projects selected for OC audits across NSW are determined by using risk profiling, which allows the regulator to target its efforts on high-risk projects,” he said.
“Our data shows around 20 per cent of developers are causing the majority of problems in the market, which is why our compliance efforts are focussing on those players.”
The Minister said Fair Trading had developed a powerful risk matrix to target audits on high-risk projects by analysing the history and performance of certifiers, builders and developers, and combining regulatory data from across different Government Agencies, including Fire and Rescue NSW and SafeWork NSW.
“What we’ve seen on the ground supports our predictions with inspectors identifying defects on the majority of the projects audited,” Mr Anderson said.
