Food Premises: Design, Construction and Fitout

About this course.

Food premises have special design and construction requirements because the building itself affects the safety of the food handled within it, and unsafe food can make people ill. Unlike an ordinary shop or office, where the building simply shelters its occupants, a food premises is a working environment in which raw ingredients are stored, prepared, cooked, held and served, and where poor design can allow food to become contaminated, spoil, or carry harmful bacteria. Because of this, food premises must satisfy two overlapping bodies of requirements at once: the food-safety requirements set out in the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) Food Standards Code, and the building requirements developed by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB). The design must serve food safety and building safety together, and both must be satisfied for the premises to be lawfully built and opened.

The food-safety dimension is what most clearly distinguishes these premises. Food can be contaminated in several ways — by harmful microorganisms, by chemicals such as cleaning agents, and by physical objects such as glass, pests or foreign matter — and the design of the premises has a direct bearing on all of them. A layout that forces raw meat past ready-to-eat food, a surface that cannot be cleaned properly, a missing hand-wash basin, a drain that allows waste water to pool, or a gap that lets pests in can each turn into a food-safety failure. The FSANZ Food Standards Code sets requirements for food premises and equipment aimed at preventing exactly these problems, covering matters such as the suitability and cleanability of the premises, the provision of hand-washing facilities, the control of contamination, and the management of waste. These requirements exist to protect public health, and they shape the design from the layout down to the detailing of a junction between a wall and a floor.