Construction Australia

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Reshaping Sydney's Skyline - 40 Year Cap on Building Heights Removed

What has been described as the most comprehensive urban planning overhaul in over 40 years is now underway. Since 1971 there has been a 300-metre height restriction on skyscrapers in central Sydney.

At the close of 2019 the state government announced its in-principle support for the strategy, emphasizing the potential for investment and growth. The draft strategy and planning proposal are expected to be on exhibition in early 2020.

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Building Designer on NCC Compliance

Building Designer on NCC Compliance

To obtain NCC compliance, building designers can:

✅ Check design elements against the Deemed to Satisfy (DTS) provisions of the NCC ✅ Use computer-based thermal simulation of the proposed development (the JV3 Verification Method)

Book our CPD Tutorials and learn how the NCC 2019 affect architects and building designers.

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Laminated Glass for High Rise Buildings

Laminated glass is preferred for use in high-rise and muti-storey buildings for its safety and security benefits. Rather than shattering on impact, glass is held together by an interlayer. Learn more how laminated glass can be incorporated into Safetyline Jalousie louvre windows.

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Industry Standards Construction

Safetyline Jalousie aims to exceed industry standards through rigorous quality checks for technical features of the louvre windows. 

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Balustrade Requirement

With their 106mm openings, Safetyline Jalousie louvres meet all of the necessary requirements for use as balustrade without the need for any additional options or bars to be fitted.

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DC Studio and Koichi Takoda Architects selected glazed windows to complement the building.

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Australia Building Developers

In 2017 alone, Australia’s population rose by 1.6%. This has influenced the buildings that developers create.

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Building Certifier in Australia

Choosing an appropriate and experienced building certifier may help you to avoid the the issue of non-compliance.

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Does Australia Need Better Regulation for Building Certifiers?

There’s an increasing call for better regulation in the industry. The focus seems to have fallen on building certifiers. But is it needed?

The issue of certification is more prominent than it’s been in a long time. The industry has seen many raise the issue of non-compliance over the last few years. However, the Opal Tower saga has created a new target.

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Boom in High Rise Building Construction Gives Rise to Safety Concerns

Population growth in Australia has create more demand for accommodation. This has led to a boom in high-rise building construction.

Up until 2009, the rate of apartment construction in Australia was quite flat. But the rate of building approval and construction has shot up in the years since. By 2015, apartments accounted for over 30% of all new building approvals.

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Bushfire Prevent Construction

Bushfire Prevent Construction Bushfires are on the rise in Australia.

SafetyLine Jalousie's Louvre Windows can improve building safety in at-risk areas.

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Construction Work Stalls as the Residential Sector Goes Sharply into Reverse

Australia's construction sector has not only hit the brakes, it has moved sharply into reverse according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Key points:

Construction work in New South Wales and Victoria has fallen for the first time in four years

Overall construction work last year down 2pc on 2017

The value of residential construction fell 3.1pc in Q4 against expectations of a rebound

Construction work done in the three months to the end of 2018 was expected to rebound following a surprise fall over the third quarter, however the decline accelerated.

Total construction in seasonally adjusted terms fell 3.1 per cent over the quarter, compared with expectations of a marginal rise.

The total value of construction work done last year was $51.6 billion, around 2 per cent lower than in 2017

While the slowdown in the engineering sector has been on a long-running story as the construction of big resource and gas projects wrap up, the sudden fall in residential work has become alarming.

The value of residential work fell 3.6 per cent over the quarter, although it is still up 2.1 per cent over the year.

The major surprise was the weakness in New South Wales and Victoria, the two powerhouses in the construction sector.

Both reported their first quarterly falls in the value of construction in four years.

The weakness, particularly in the residential sector, is supported by private industry surveys run by the likes of the Australian Industry Group and the Housing Industry Association which have reported home building activity to be at its lowest ebb in six years.

Another surprise buried in the data was the weakness in public sector spending on big infrastructure projects which had, until now, been propping up the broader construction industry.

Public sector spending on engineering construction was down more than 10 per cent for the quarter against a more modest 1.2 per cent decline in the private sector.

GDP-per-capita Recession

IFM Investors chief economist Alex Joiner said the public infrastructure "boom" is perhaps overhyped or at arguably best an inconsistent contributor to GDP growth.

The slowdown is also feeding into the labour market, with the most recent detailed ABS data showing jobs in construction fell 1.6 per cent in the three months to November last year.

The scorecard so far on fourth quarter GDP to be released next week makes for fairly bleak reading.

On top of today's unambiguously weak data, retail sales volumes have been poor and net exports are also shaping up as a drag on growth.

Dr Joiner said removing the effects of population growth from the national accounts, Australia faced the prospect of GDP-per-capita recession after the third quarter's surprisingly weak result.

"Looks like a soft quarter in train — [although] some significant partials to come though — two consecutive quarters of negative GDP per capita a real risk," he said.

ANZ's Felicity Emmett said there was still some work in the pipeline, but the figures — when coupled with the rapid decline in building approvals — pointed to the flow of work drying up quite quickly and a solid fall in residential investment this year.

"While there is still a considerable amount of work in the pipeline for public engineering construction and residential construction, the weakness in [the second half of] 2018 has been more marked than we expected, and … this points to an earlier and sharper turn in the cycle than we expected," she said.

Market economists are becoming increasingly convinced fourth quarter GDP will well and truly undershoot the Reserve Bank's implicit forecast of 0.6 per over the quarter.

UBS has cut it forecast to just 0.3 per cent — or 2.5 per cent over the year — but says that may still be optimistic the way recent data has rolled out.

Reference: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/construction-work-done-q4-2018/10852610

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Vertical schools aren’t just a concept anymore. Many Australian suburbs are actively building these types of schools. Could these buildings become the new standard in educational facilities?

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Construction Industry Faces 'Screeching Halt' Over Cladding Risk

The combustible cladding crisis has left Australian building surveyors struggling to find compliant professional indemnity insurance, a development that industry sources warn could bring the construction industry to a "screeching halt".

If left unresolved, they say the withdrawal of insurers from the market could leave surveyors non-compliant with the law and therefore unable to practise. A lack of surveyors would bring the construction industry to a standstill.

"If surveyors are unable to get unfettered cover, that's going to throw up huge problems for the construction industry," said Hubert Wajszel, principal at law firm Barry Nilsson.

Melbourne's Lacrosse Building, which caught fire in 2014, was covered in combustible aluminium cladding. Wayne Taylor

"If you don't have surveyors, you can't get building permits and occupancy permits. You can't start a project and you can't sign off on a project. That could actually mean the building construction industry comes to a screeching halt," he said, adding the problem had worsened in the past six months.

The warning comes 18 months after the Grenfell Tower fire in London left 72 people dead, and brought the crisis to a head. Following the tragedy, it emerged the highly flammable aluminium composite panels used in the Grenfell Tower had been widely used in construction around the world, including in Australia. The Lacrosse tower in Melbourne's Docklands, which caught fire in 2014, was covered in such cladding.

Greg Hansen, a Melbourne-based insurance broker with Austbroker, told The Australian Financial Review no Australian insurers were offering professional indemnity insurance to surveyors, forcing brokers to look overseas for insurers willing to take on the risk.

However, in the past few months almost all insurers were now putting exclusions into their polices, he said. The situation was becoming so serious that, for one of his clients, he could find only one insurer willing to cover combustible cladding-related claims – a London-based firm in the Lloyds group. He said without cladding exclusions, the premiums were more than five times the cost.

'The problem will grow'

Mr Hansen said insurance policies generally last 12 months, so many surveyors would not yet have encountered the problem.

"The problem will grow, as more surveyors hit renewal and their insurance broker struggles to find the appropriate cover. We know this crisis is looming," he said. "I won't say it's impossible to buy cover, but it's probable that they won't be able to buy."

Mr Wajszel said one big class action could wipe out the entire PI insurance pool, which in Victoria amounts to only about $5 million a year. "That's perhaps why insurers would be unwilling to jump back in. One claim, and everything they've made will go out the window."

In Victoria, surveyors were required to have "unfettered" PI cover, which meant they insured against being sued for any amount, he said.

"On one view, by having an exclusion of this nature, surveyors are falling foul of that order, which means the Victorian Building Authority may not be able to re-register a surveyor for the following year."

Mr Hansen said the VBA already was asking surveyors to send in their entire insurance policy document, not just the certificate, to ensure they were covered for a cladding-related claim.

Mr Hansen and Mr Wajszel agreed the VBA had to rethink its requirement that surveyors have full cover for such claims or it would see the long-term viability of the building industry in jeopardy.

However, Mr Hansen said relaxing this requirement would leave surveyors without cover, which in the case of a cladding-related claim would be likely to send them bankrupt.

The situation is just as serious in NSW, according to the Association of Accredited Certifiers, which found in a recent survey that 60 per cent of surveyors had difficulty securing fully complying cover and almost 66 per cent had considered leaving the industry over issues with professional indemnity insurance.

ACA chief executive Jill Brookfield said: "If certifiers cannot get compliant insurance there is a significant risk that they will leave the industry, which will have a real impact on NSW's infrastructure programs, any assessment of cladding and the issue of building approvals for housing and general building development."

Source: https://www.afr.com/business/insurance/construction-industry-faces-screeching-halt-over-cladding-risk-20190115-h1a395

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Why You Need to Avoid Non Compliant Products Construction

Learn why builder needs to avoid non-compliant products (NCPS) and why louvre window is a good choice in construction buildings.

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Recent Survey Suggests that Non-Compliant Building Products Cause Major Construction Issues

Many builders have come across non-compliant materials. This is despite the strictness of the country's building codes. Here’s why this is such a major issue in the building sector. There’s no denying the importance of building compliance in Australia.