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Regulatory Priority: Practitioner competency

Protecting consumers and practitioners from the harms caused by:

  • registered/licensed practitioners who do not have required skills and competencies.
  • rogue practitioners (unregistered and unlicensed people including unqualified practitioners) who intentionally or continually fail to comply with relevant legislation or standards, leading to unsafe or non-compliant outcomes for consumers.

What we know:

The quality of building and plumbing work by non-accredited building/plumbing practitioners is well below community expectations and the impact of unregulated building and plumbing work can have significant financial, insurance, health and safety impacts on consumers.

We are aware that some regulated work is carried out by people who are not currently registered/licensed, are working outside the bounds of their accreditation or do not have sufficient knowledge or experience to carry out the work.

What we expect:

*Anyone performing building or plumbing work in Victoria holds the appropriate registration or licence.

*All registered/licensed practitioners must understand and perform their work in accordance with relevant legislative requirements, the National Construction Code (NCC) and Australian Standards, and any relevant code of conduct.

*Practitioners must work within the boundaries of their registration/licence, knowledge and experience.

What we have done

  • Published a new Regulatory Policy Statement that sets out the Authority’s objective to improve consumer outcomes, how it will use its powers and how it intends to regulate and ensure compliance with building regulations.
  • Continued to audit builders’ compliance with domestic building insurance (DBI) requirements. The Authority has been granted new legislative powers to act against  builders who do not obtain the required DBI.
  • Provided 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.
  • Setup a resource hub for building and plumbing practitioners that includes links to webinars, practice notes, industry updates, forms and guidance.
  • Delivered annual Building Surveyors’ Conferences to assist building surveyors, building inspectors and other building practitioners to increase their knowledge, skills and capabilities.
  • 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.
  • 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 comply with.
  • Employed a Principal Plumbing Specialist (PDF, 143.69 KB), 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.
  • Completed a series of National Construction Code (NCC) roadshows across Victoria to ensure practitioners are up to date with the 2022 NCC changes including requirements for products and materials for use in the design and construction of buildings.
  • Issued regular updates via the VBA Mail to keep practitioners updated on industry news as well as the Authority’s activities and reporting.
  • 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.
  • Continued to ensure practitioners understand and perform their work in accordance with legislative requirements, the NCC and Australian Standards by disciplining practitioners found to engage in non-compliant building and plumbing work that has serious risks to life, health and safety and report on these in Annual Reports and on the VBA’s website.
  • Continued to consider any previous convictions when assessing practitioner applications for registration or renewal in building or plumbing work.
  • Provided consumers with access to a practitioner register and disciplinary register and promoted these tools to highlight the importance of using registered and licensed practitioners to ensure their work complies with the relevant regulations, codes and standard to protect the health and safety of consumers.
  • Continued to explore and enhance the use of data and intelligence to specifically target practitioners who may be engaged in non-compliant plumbing/building practices that may pose serious risks to life, health and safety.
  • 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.
    • how the Authority can better support industry and practitioners as well as a better building system through the way that it regulates, educates and engages.
    • 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.
  • Introduced online exams (PDF, 146.42 KB) for building practitioners to improve application processing times and make the registration pathway more efficient and accessible for practitioners.
  • Continued to ensure building and plumbing practitioners are assessed and meet the requirements to be registered/licensed for the accreditation they are seeking.
  • Established an Industry Harms Consultative Committee (IHCC) (PDF, 6157.96 KB) (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.