Friday’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF) presented an opportunity take action on building product safety in the wake of the recent London Grenfell Tower fire and follows calls by many to undertake audits of residential apartment buildings and other high risk buildings.
The BMF is a body of Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers responsible for building and plumbing policy and regulation. The Hon Craig Laundy MP, Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, is the current Chair of the BMF; with the Department providing secretariat support.
During this meeting, the first since April, all governments reaffirmed their commitment to best practice regulation and certification to ensure the safety of Australia’s buildings.
The BMF Communique summarising the key takeaways from the meeting states, “Since the 2014 Lacrosse Apartment fire in Melbourne, the Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF) has been working collectively on proactive and appropriate responses to ensure that our buildings, in particular high-rise buildings, are safe and our compliance and enforcement systems are robust. The BMF, in response to the concerns raised as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, is commissioning an expert to report back as quickly as possible to examine the broader compliance and enforcement problems within the building & construction systems (for example: education, licensing, design, quality assurance, competencies of practitioners, importation) affecting the implementation of the National Construction Code (NCC).
“Further, under the direction of BMF, the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) will expedite progress in the implementation of measures through the NCC that will prevent the non-compliant use of cladding from occurring in the future.”
HIA has supported the proposed actions on high risk buildings being undertaken by both the Building Ministers and the Australian Building Codes Board since 2016.
HIA Chief Executive Industry Policy Kristin Brookfield says the review was both expected and necessary not just in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, but to expedite the current actions underway to ensure a consistent set of processes to ensure that everyone interprets the code in the same way.
“We have provided direct input to many of the changes now expected to be included in the National Construction Code in 2019. However the actions to be taken by the states and territories do appear to be taking more time to finalise than we had hoped,” said Ms Brookfield.
“The actions agreed to by Ministers in 2016 remain the key steps to improving building safety in Australia and they should be progressed as quickly as possible.
From 1 July 2017, the BMF is implementing a one-stop shop website that will provide general information on non-conforming building products, and include the ability for the public to submit a complaint or enquiry about a product or material. The website can be found at: http://www.abcb.gov.au/NCBP/Non-Conforming-Building-Products.
“A national webpage like this is important for everyone in the building product supply chain – builders, consumers, building certifiers and companies that make building products,” said Ms Brookfield.
The BMF is likely to reconvene in October this year to continue the national dialogue.
