By July 2021, high-rise residential developers, designers and building practitioners will be operating under a new set of rules in NSW. New digital tools will help the market meet these standards.
As part of the overhaul of building laws in NSW, contractors will have to declare the as-built quality of their build and will be held to account if their work isn’t compliant.
The Office of the Building Commissioner with the support of the 2020 Residential Apartment Buildings Act will stop shoddy buildings hitting the market and rid the industry of poor quality developers.
However, Building Commissioner David Chandler says the industry will not simply self-heal with the passing of the coming legislation.
“The legislation, regulator changes and ratings tools will not solve this crisis by just focusing on putting out the trash—job done. The whole industry needs to rethink its modus operandi,” Chandler said.
Fresh thinking and new digital ways of working will support the legislation to ensure the stability of the future industry.
While these changes are necessary to reinstate public confidence in the market, good contractors need a way to verify their quality work, and that it matches the as-built drawings.
Quality assurance helps with this. However, the box ticking exercise quality assurance has been in the past is no longer fit for purpose under these new laws.
Manual checklists are time consuming and often done long after the fact to log compliance. Rarely do they improve or accurately record the work. New digital QA tools will change this.
Conqa director Daniel O’Donoghue says comprehensive quality assurance checks are now imperative for NSW projects but paper is not up to the job.
“QA is about getting work right the first time, and evidencing it.”
“Paper adds too many barriers to being used effectively, and it is nearly impossible to verify if paper was ever used on site. Contractor site management has always been burdened with an impractical process,” O’Donoghue said.
Conqa is construction software which makes the QA process practical and live. It helps to avoid re-work and document work seamlessly.
Anyone who carries out residential developments needs to be confident the work is done correctly and recorded in a reliable manner .
O’Donoghue says digital tools like Conqa lift the burden on trades, builders and certifiers of doing QA and give developers visibility into what they’re purchasing.
“Digital quality assurance gets away from paper and puts it into the pockets, and therefore the hands, of site management at all times. It allows for real-time tracking of work completion,” O’Donoghue said.
Conqa has helped their customers to save millions.
“It’s estimated that between five to 20 percent of a project’s value is lost to re-work. We’ve helped contractors to see reductions in rework of more than 80 percent. Good quality assurance practices don’t just help building professionals have a good night’s sleep, they help them make money too,” O’Donoghue said.
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