NCC Volume One: Multi-Residential, Commercial and Public Buildings

About this course.

Volume One is the part of the National Construction Code (NCC) that contains the technical provisions mainly for larger and more complex buildings — broadly Class 2 to Class 9. In concept these are multi-unit residential buildings such as apartments, shared and transient accommodation such as hotels and residential care, commercial buildings such as offices and shops, industrial buildings such as warehouses and factories, and public buildings including health-care, aged-care and assembly buildings. The NCC is developed and maintained by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) on behalf of the Australian, state and territory governments. Volume One sits alongside Volume Two, which deals mainly with houses and outbuildings, and Volume Three, which deals with plumbing and drainage.

To understand Volume One it helps to understand the NCC as a whole. The NCC is a single, national code that sets the minimum required standards for the safety, health, amenity, accessibility and sustainability of buildings across Australia. It is given legal effect by each state and territory through its own building legislation, which is why the Code is described as nationally consistent but applied jurisdiction by jurisdiction. This distinction matters enormously in practice: the ABCB writes and publishes the Code, but it is each state or territory that adopts it, sets the date it takes effect there, and may make its own additions or variations. A practitioner must therefore always work from the version and variations that apply in the jurisdiction where the building is located, rather than assuming the base Code applies unchanged everywhere.