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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 Alison Kirk
In 2021 we invested significant time in engaging with NSW government, continuing to raise our profile. We demonstrated our influence as an advocate on the professional indemnity insurance impacts arising from the building reforms when we gave evidence at the NSW Parliament’s hearing on its Further Inquiry into Building Reforms. We appeared with Engineers Australia and the Insurance Council of Australia, following our joint letter to the inquiry on insurance issues. Our engagement with these associations has led to influencing change including securing a one-year exemption from insurance requirements under the Design and Building Practitioners Regulation. We also produced a joint Guide for Design Practitioners and Engineers with Engineers Australia and the Australian Institute of Architects. This guide is a practical resource to help your business tackle the practice issues of contracting, insurance exposure and the requirements under the Design and Building Practitioners scheme. We have also engaged regularly with Transport for NSW as they review their suite of contracts and Treasury as they review tendering of infrastructure advisory services. While these engagements have not resulted in changes at this time despite assurances, Consult Australia is the go-to association for these agencies to get advice on issues and solutions. Finally in 2021, we have provided significant member support with lockdown and construction pause issues as government rules changed. We advocated on behalf of members to try and minimise the negative impacts on business continuity, although the enhanced restrictions in the local government areas of concerns were particularly challenging. During this time, our strong relationship with Infrastructure NSW ensured we got up-to-date advice and we had an ally talking about the specialists in our sector who could attend construction sites with minimal public health risks. In 2022 we look forward to talking more to government clients on de-risking strategies in terms of contracting and procurement in addition to keeping strong on what we need to see fixed in the regulatory environment.
VIC Cindy Laird Our profile and influence with Victorian government grew significantly through our advocacy on key issues such as the Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019 (Vic) (the PER Act) and the Construction Supplier Register (CSR). In respect of the registration of engineers, we engaged with Consumer Affairs Victoria to push for clarity and certainty on implementation of the scheme, including the definition of building. Members have the benefit of business guides on the scheme, which Consult Australia produced as well as government information updated when required. In terms of the CSR, several members had long standing issues with the requirements of the CSR, with a review in late 2020 threatening to impact the ability of up to 36 businesses already on the CSR to provide engineering services to Victorian construction projects. The review outcome would have also impacted new entrants to the CSR.
