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The VBA's Proactive Inspections Program (PIP) Q4 findings

The VBA’s Proactive Inspections Program (PIP) ensures we have a visible presence on worksites across Victoria to detect non-compliant work and take the required action to have it fixed. Here are some of the Q4 findings.

Through PIP, our focus and resources are dedicated to identifying issues early so that we can prevent or reduce harm, support a robust and productive construction sector, protect consumers against poor workmanship and avoid impacts to the safety, health and amenity of future occupants.

All potentially serious non-compliances are notified to the relevant practitioners, who are required to demonstrate that the matters are remediated, through rectification of the faulty work, completion of unfinished work or through the production of design materials demonstrating how compliance was achieved.

During Q4, we conducted 4048 inspections as part of PIP, comprising 2252 building inspections and 1796 plumbing inspections.

Q4 PIP

Figure 1: VBA Proactive Inspections Program (PIP) Q4 2021 total inspections.

The VBA’s fieldwork capacity returned to pre-pandemic levels during Q4, which saw 1013 more inspections carried out compared to the January to March reporting period.

Twenty eight per cent of all inspections (1139) identified a compliance risk, requiring practitioners to respond to and rectify the risks identified.

In domestic building work, we have identified some trends where non-compliance is concerned. Timber framing issues have consistently been the most prevalent non-compliance identified. In the last quarter, 30 per cent of all domestic building non-compliance related to timber framing.

The persistence of this issue led the VBA to host a practitioner webinar on 23 September, Proactive Inspections Program findings – Domestic Timber Framing. This session provided practitioners will valuable insights into the issues our inspectors have been seeing in timber framing work and will hopefully lead to an improvement in this area. You can catch up on this session and register for future webinars here.

The majority of identified building non-compliance has shown marked improvement over time, particularly unreinforced brickwork and accessories and footings and slab work. You can read the full Q4 PIP report here.