NSW BUILDING REFORMS
Our work supporting members with the NSW Building Reforms continues. We were pleased after much consultation to distribute the Declared Drawing Matrix, a tool to assist Design Practitioners-Architectural in navigating their declaration requirements under the DBP Act and Regulation. We thank expert members Craig Burns, BVN and Rob Graham, Bates Smart for their invaluable input and hope you find this tool of assistance. Thanks also to Matt Press for providing his stamp of approval.
Look out for further tools, workshop and guidance coming soon.
The consultation and feedback period for the Building Bill 2023 – Licensing Proposals: A review of building licensing and registration in NSW closes this Friday, 11 August, and we are finalising our submission, which will be available on our webpage to members once submitted.
All previous submissions and correspondence are available and updated frequently to keep our members up to date.
HOUSING REFORMS
The Department of Planning and Environment will provide a draft SEPP outlining the details of their recent housing policy announcements by the end of this month. We eagerly await further detail on this policy and are looking forward to working collaboratively with government and key stakeholders to ensure the policy’s success. Learn more about the NSW Government Housing SEPP.
Michael Pascoe’s recent article, ‘I’ve found the missing housing – half a century’s worth’ cited our recent media statement.
CONNECTING WITH COUNTRY
The NSW Government Architect’s Connecting with Country Framework has now been released.
View the Connecting with Country framework.
INCREASE TO BASIX STANDARDS
We continue to advocate for the new increase to BASIX standards to be implemented as planned from 1 October 2023. Read about the Basix Standard changes.
Hear directly from Planning NSW about the revised BASIX requirements and assessment tool and learn design strategies for achieving the new performance standards through case studies presented by ESD experts at our dedicated event on 24 August 2023. Not to be missed!
INSTITUTE SURVEY: CONDENSATION KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES
We invite you to participate in a survey about the professional understanding of condensation, measures to mitigate risk and resources that are used by members. As the National Construction Code (NCC) moves to adopt more stringent measures to improve indoor air quality associated with condensation, mitigation of moisture is one of the most important areas of knowledge for architects, as we reach for net-zero goals.
The survey is being run from the Institute’s NCC Condensation Technical Working Group, and the NatHERS Technical Advisory Committee, and will inform both groups in their policy, regulation and lobbying, as well and supporting the Institute to implement nation-wide education.
We would appreciate you taking 5 minutes of your time to fill in the survey before the end of August 2023.