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The Building Commission of Victoria is amending
Victoria’s Building Regulations. As part of this amendment process
there is a significant upgrade to the Essential Services
Requirements contained in Part 11.
This amendment has been brought about by the
Building Commissions recognition that 90% percent of property
owners and managers are either ignorant to the requirement
for maintenance or ignoring the provisions requiring
maintenance.
In the amendment process the Building Commission is
also introducing a number of positive initiatives that shall see a
reduced costing, in comparison to the existing requirements.
A summary of amendments, which affect the
operational requirements of all buildings other than houses follows:
-
All buildings regardless of time of construction will
require an annual compliance statement (other than houses).
This means that Division 1 & Division 2 requirements have been
deleted from the Regulations.
-
The Annual Essential Services Report (Form 15) has been
amended to include all buildings, those with written
Occupancy Permits or determinations and those without, regardless
of time of construction and in particular buildings built prior to
July 1994.
-
All Annual
Essential Services Reports (Form 15) are to be submitted to
your local council within 7 days of issue verifying that all
active and passive systems have been maintained.
A "schedule of
essential services" is required to be issued by a building
surveyor to formulate the performance levels for active and
passive essential services. This is known as a Form 16 and is issued
once only. The intent of this amendment is to provide flexibility
and to separate the essential services as an attached schedule.
A building
surveyor can now update essential services determinations and
schedule of essential services where an essential service has been
nominated in error or the maintenance for an essential service is no
longer applicable or current.
Logbooks are to be provided for all essential services
within the building and be made available at the time of request by
an authority.
The occupier of the building is now subject to
penalties if they obstruct exits and paths of travel an
exit. Logbooks are to be kept intact.
Penalties have been significantly increased and
new penalties incorporated for the new provisions.
The Chief Officer and Municipal Building Surveyor
may either jointly or separately inspect the exits, essential
services, essential services maintenance records and the displayed
documents in a building to determine whether inspection, testing
and maintenance is being conducted in accordance with the relevant
schedule of essential services or essential services determination.
Many insurance companies are now requiring the Annual Essential
Services Report as part of the renewal process
This article was submitted by Brad Johannsen, Director of
Total Essential Services Group Pty Ltd. CETEC works
with TESG to provide integrated solutions for our clients. To learn
more about TESG visit their
website or you
can contact them on 1800 364 334.
To provide feedback about this article or to submit your own
article for future editions of Xtra in RiskeNews, contact us
here.
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