NSW tips more millions into defect detectives

Life must be pretty sweet for the former NSW Fair Trading civil servants who were tipped into the Building Commissioner’s defects taskforce.

No longer do they have to deal with confused strata owners, disgruntled tenants, unreal real estate agents and mis-managing strata managers (not to mention car-mangling motor mechanics and tattooists who can’t colour within the lines).

Instead they get to play detective, working out who among the state’s thousands of developers are most likely to be playing fast and loose with the building codes and then unleash the hounds – or, at least, despatch building inspectors to see what they are doing on their latest projects.

The NSW Government announced this week that it plans to invest $35 million in Building Commission NSW’s digital capabilities to weed out more dodgy builders, as the watchdog reveals details of a recent joint-operation that protected hundreds of buyers and renovators.

The 2024-25 NSW Budget will inject the additional funds into the Building Commission to lift building standards across the state and help ensure quality home builds and renovations.

The funding will allow the Commission to “adopt new digital capabilities using data, intelligence and analytics to track high risk builders, watch them closely and act to get them out of the sector,” a press release stated this week.

The Budget commitment follows a joint data matching operation between the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) and Building Commission NSW earlier this year, exposing 13 building businesses for failing to hold adequate home builders compensation insurance.

“We created Building Commission NSW to lift standards across the sector, and that’s exactly what it’s doing,’ Minister for Building and Fair Trading Anoulack Chanthivong said. 

“This investment takes Building Commission NSW to the cutting edge with boots on the ground and the technology it needs to target resources where they’re needed.” 

The Home Building Compensation Fund (HBCF) is the last line of protection for families building their own homes if they’re ripped off or their builder goes bust, and builders are required by law to have coverage.

The failure to hold adequate insurance left more than 226 mum and dad home builders and renovators at risk of financial devastation in the event that the builder was forced into administration. In 2023 there were 72,422 home building and renovation projects in NSW and every one relied on HBCF to protect homeowners in the event a building business failed.

In addition to strengthening digital and data analytics capabilities, the 2024-25 NSW Budget funding will also see the Commission help deliver better homes by:

• Providing boots on the ground to examine the quality of buildings and force developers to fix substandard construction work.
• Building on Construct NSW and working with industry to design courses that supercharge the capability of the construction industry, and
• Getting people into homes faster by digitising compliance certificates, making it quicker for tradies to get and the Building Commission to verify quality work.

Established just over six months ago, Building Commission NSW has set a new benchmark for building oversight.

In that time, the Commission has slapped more than 40 rectification orders on dodgy apartment buildings and inspected more than 300 freestanding homes. 

Building Commission NSW has also cancelled, suspended or disqualified 146 licences as it works to rid the industry of risky players including builders, certifiers and design practitioners.