6
Consulting Matters
What’s happening at Consult Australia
State & Territory Updates With varying market conditions around the country Consult Australia’s state and territory managers share their insights on key challenges and opportunities for our members.
NSW Kristy Eulenstein As suspected, practice issues in New South Wales have been focussed on the Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021 which were recently finalised. A key win for consultants is that we were successful in securing a one-year transition period for the insurance obligations in the regulations. This means that both building practitioners and design practitioners get the same transition time. In the next year Consult Australia will be working to ensure any obligations imposed are fair and reasonable. Most recently the government consulted on proposed Guidelines and Ministerial Direction relevant to ‘regulated designs’. We have alerted the government to the considerable confusion in the industry about the reforms and continue to work with them to produce clear guidance materials for industry that can be shared with members. Members who provide, or are seeking to provide, services to Transport for NSW (TfNSW) should note that TfNSW will soon be releasing proposed contracts for consultation. The proposed contracts are a result of considerable work within the agency as it amalgamated and streamlines the various Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and TfNSW contracts. Our meetings with TfNSW on procurement issues have been encouraging, however it is vital that businesses make clear to TfNSW any concerns with the contracts (in addition to our submission). Keep checking our website for more information. We understand that capacity in the market is constrained with the amount of work in the pipeline and we continue our messaging to the NSW government to coordinate their project pipelines across the State and with other jurisdictions. We will continue to use Infrastructure NSW’s Infrastructure Industry Forum to raise these issues. Many thanks to those members involved in the Year-12 Infrastructure Traineeships where students undertake a rotational traineeship with consulting businesses, contracting businesses and the government. Anthony Manning, Chief Executive of School Infrastructure NSW was very complimentary about our involvement in this people-focussed initiative. If you want to get involved please contact us. NSW Gold Sponsors:
NT Jan Irvine A significant milestone for our pipeline advocacy is the launch of Infrastructure NT, which we have been calling for in line with our thought leadership report on independent infrastructure bodies. The recently released NT Budget has a number of measures relevant to members, including land releases and funding of the vaccine rollout (an issue relevant to our advocacy on people which is being considered in every jurisdiction). In our practice area, we recently made a submission on building reforms and engineering registration. Our recommendations were consistent with our messaging in other parts of Australia that we need to minimise unnecessary burdens on industry. One significant burden raised by members was the need to register both as an individual engineer and as a business in NT. This is an unnecessary duplication of registration and insurance requirements. NT Gold Sponsors
