Occupation Certificates and Critical-Stage Inspections

About this course.

The journey runs from obtaining approval to build, through construction that is inspected at defined stages, to a final certificate that permits the building to be lawfully occupied and used. In broad terms, a project first secures the necessary planning and building approvals; construction then proceeds under those approvals; at set points during construction the work is inspected to confirm it complies with the approved documents and applicable requirements; and when the building is complete and the required matters are satisfied, an occupation certificate (or its local equivalent) is issued, after which the building may lawfully be occupied. Approval to build is not the same as approval to occupy — these are distinct stages — and the names, sequence and detail of each step differ by state and territory.

The first stage is generally approval, which itself often has two dimensions. Planning or development approval addresses whether the proposed use and development are acceptable for the site — matters such as land use, zoning, amenity, siting and appearance — and is typically a local-government or planning-authority function. Building approval, sometimes a separate step and sometimes combined, addresses whether the proposed building work complies with the technical building requirements, principally the National Construction Code as developed by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), together with the approved plans and specifications. A project usually needs the relevant approvals in place before building work may lawfully begin. What the approvals are called, who grants them, and how the planning and building strands relate to each other varies between jurisdictions, so practitioners must understand the pathway in their own state or territory.