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For issue of a building permit are the DTS provisions always a suitable building solution for compliance with the mandatory performance requirements?
The Building Regulations do not permit the Relevant Building Surveyor in Victoria Australia to require a higher requirement for issue of a building permit than the Act or the Regulations require. Section 24 (2) of the Building Act 1993 states that:
“Subject to section 24A and Division 4, the relevant building surveyor must not issue a building permit that imposes on the applicant lesser or greater standards or requirements than those prescribed by this Act or the building regulations, unless permitted to do so by this Act or the building regulations.”
(S24A lists further limitations related to builders for domestic work and requirements for building practitioner registration.) For those of you who have been around a whilst you will recall that before May 1996 there was only one way of satisfying this – the prescriptive provisions in the Building Code of Australia. After May 1996 this changed when the performance based BCA was introduced.
Given that the BCA performance requirements are the mandatory provisions and the DTS are only one way of demonstrating compliance with them – are there designs where the DTS are not enough?Can I as a building surveyor require a client to do more than the DTS where they tell me that the basis for compliance with the performance requirements is by compliance with the DTS? It is a really interesting question?
There is really no guidance in this area, but this has some interesting ramifications for the DTS being the benchmark for compliance with the mandatory performance requirements.
Tags: BCA, Building Permits, Building Regulations, DTS