Discussion paper: Mandatory Inspections - A response to the Building Confidence Report

My views on the above are as follows:

1. Mandatory inspection for assessment of compliance of building work should be undertaken at stages of construction as nominated by the designer on the design and/or construction drawings.
2. Mandatory inspection for assessment of compliance of building work should be undertaken, in person, by the responsible senior member of the structural/mechanical/electrical/civil engineering components of the building works being undertaken.
3. Mandatory inspection for assessment of compliance of building work should be undertaken at the appropriate sequence time of construction before the subjects of inspection are covered over by the following stages of construction are undertaken.

My views on the above are as follows:

1. The phrase "prescribed person" should be replaced with "responsible senior member of the structural/mechanical/electrical/civil engineering components of the building works being undertaken".

An alternative approach would be to require the engineering component design team to nominate the particular components to be inspected during the progress of construction and prior to "building in" of the respective components.

With all due respect to building surveyors, such personnel should not, and can not, be expected to know which particular components of a building are critical to ensure compliance with the design/construction drawings and the designers' engineering philosophy for the manner in which the building is to react to given load actions.
Knowledge of the role played by any particular engineering component of a building is specifically designed by the respective design team.
A building surveyor has no fore-knowledge of the designers' philosophy applied to the design of a particular building.

In my opinion, it is not realistic or practical to expect the construction industry to interpret a published list of minimum mandatory inspections and apply the listed items appropriately to a particular building design.
Such a list is too vague and open to misinterpretation by persons having little training and knowledge of the consequences of incorrect selection.
Hence, the concept of such a "list of minimum mandatory inspections" should be discarded.
My above responses to items 10. 11, 12 and 13 would favour the designers' notification on the design drawings/documents of the particular building components to be inspected, leaving no opportunity for misinterpretation.

The fire safety inspections should be as nominated on the fire safety design/construction drawings/documentation by the responsible senior fire safety officer of the particular design team for the building to be constructed.

Please refer to my response to above item 15.

Any concept involving a "sliding scale of percentage" for inspection building components is totally inappropriate and should be abandoned.

Please refer my responses to items 10, 11, 12 and 13.

If the committee does not require the notification and site inspection of nominated building components during construction by the senior responsible design engineer for the respective field of endeavour, then the root cause of the issue has not ben understood.

It would also be required that such compliance inspections should be undertaken personally by the senior responsible designer whether the original design office may be located intrastate or interstate within Australia or from elsewhere overseas.

The use of a proxy representative should not be allowed.