Information for New Clients - Glossary

Glossary

Accredited Certifier, Principal Certifying Authority (PCA), and Inspector: The Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources dictates that any person performing a site inspection must be accredited with at least a Grade 4 accreditation level. To achieve accreditation the candidate generally has both university qualifications and field experience. To maintain their accreditation, the building surveyor must gain 90 CPD points every three years through the attendance of short courses, seminars and conferences. This is to ensure the building surveyor is always aware of new concerns affecting the industry and can adequately offer services of a high quality.
Accredited Certifier is responsible for issuing the Construction Certificate. This involves assessing the submitted information and supplying the approval to start building.
The Principal Certifying Authority undertakes the inspections of the site and will assess the compliance to the plans at each critical stage and will issue the Occupation Certificate enabling the project to be occupied.
Both of these roles can be legally undertaken by the same qualified professional. Occasionally an applicant will have used council to issue their Construction Certificate (in the capacity of Accredited Certifier) but due to various reasons restricting a council employee’s time, level of experience etc, the applicant will often seek the professional service of a Private Certifier to complete the remaining certification of the project. Usually this second stage is the issuance of an Occupation Certificate and all of the critical stage inspections leading up this point.

Development Consent: This is issued by your local council in most cases. It generally has a DA reference number, a date of endorsement, a date of expiration and will provide a list of conditions that must be adhered to while building your development. The Development Consent is also referred to as Development Approval (DA).

Conditions: The Conditions on a DA pertain to the requirements affecting the area of the development such as noise pollution, any landscaping controls, hours of site operation etc, and requirements pertaining to the type of development unique to the particular area.

Building Code of Australia: Commonly referred to as the BCA. The BCA is a federal document but has state variations. It contains the minium requirements that a building must achieve. All plans and site inspections are checked against this document for compliance. It is a kind of recipe book for constructing a project in a safe, healthy and habitable manner.

Building Certificate: This is a certificate issued by council on a building or part that insures the building or part will not be demolished in a period of seven (7) years. This is often used to formalise unauthorised Works.

Exempt Development: This development that council specifies as not requiring a formal application for consent. For example: a letterbox or a brick bbq.

Complying Development Application: Is an application made to council or a Private Certifier. If the proposal satisfies council’s policies for the type of development, a Complying Development Certificate can be issued negating the need to go through the process of applying for a Development Consent and Construction Certificate. An example of this could be a swimming pool to a single storey dwelling (in some cases).

Section 73 Certificate: This is a certificate issued by the Water Authority (for Example Sydney Water) ensuring services such as water supply and sewerage are appropriate for relevant developments. Generally Single houses do not require a Section 73, but an example requiring one would be a development of a multi unit site where complex sewerage systems are required.

Section 94 Contributions: This is a contribution paid to council for multi unit residential sites as specified by council. In theory it is used for providing public facilities such as parks, library resources etc. The difference between a multi unit neighbour of a single dwelling paying the contribution is calculated by the theory that a multi unit development is increasing the population more than a single dwelling therefore the owner or developer must contribute financially to their local council.

Owner Builder’s Permit: A Certificate issued by the Department of Fair Trading after successfully completing the Owner Builder's course run through TAFE. TAFE runs a short course supplying valuable information enabling the owner to undertake the role of builder and be aware of some of the risks associated with this role. On successfully completing this course a TAFE certificate will be issued with which to take to the Department of Fair Trading, pay a fee and be supplied the permit.