National Construction Code (info)

Australia’s laws and building regulations

The Australian Constitution sets out the roles, responsibilities and powers of the Australian Government. Conventionally, matters that are not mentioned in the Constitution are the responsibility of the States.

Because the Constitution does not mention matters regarding the safety, health and amenity of people in buildings, the responsibility for them rests with the State and Territory Governments. This results in eight separate Acts of Parliament and eight distinct building regulatory systems.

At various times it’s been even more complex, with some states passing on many of their building regulatory powers to their municipal councils. This effectively enacted their own building regulatory systems through council by-laws.

Volumes One and Two (the Building Code of Australia)

The complexity of Australia's building regulatory system provided a legislative maze for building practitioners to work through. However, after World War II several of the States and Territories started to establish more uniform technical building requirements, and those States and Territories which delegated their primary responsibilities to municipal councils started to reclaim control. This prompted further discussion about the benefits of having a national set of building regulations.

In 1965, the Interstate Standing Committee on Uniform Building Regulations (ISCUBR) was established. ISCUBR was an agreement between the State and Territory administrations responsible for building regulatory matters, to pool their resources for the benefit of all States and Territories. ISCUBR's first task was to draft a model technical code for building regulatory purposes. The document was referred to as the "Australian Model Uniform Building Code" (AMUBC), and was first released in the early 1970's.

The AMUBC contained proposals for both technical matters and some administrative matters, which were based on the then Local Government Act of New South Wales. The intention was that States and Territories could use the AMUBC as a model for their own building regulations. However, variation from the model was considerable, with many changing the provisions in accordance with their perceptions of local needs.

In 1980, the Local Government Ministerial Council agreed to the formation of the Australian Building Regulations Coordinating Council (AUBRCC) to supersede ISCUBR. AUBRCC’s main task was to continue to develop the AMUBC, which led to the production of the first edition of the Building Code of Australia (BCA) in 1988.

The BCA was further refined and a new edition was released in 1990. States and Territories progressively adopted this edition of the BCA during the early 1990s.

The Australian Building Codes Board

In 1991, the Building Regulation Review Task Force recommended to Council of Australian Governments (COAG) the establishment of a body to achieve far-reaching national reform. An intergovernmental agreement (IGA) was signed in April 1994 to establish the Australian Building Codes Board ABCB. One of the first tasks of the ABCB was to convert the BCA into a more fully performance-based document.

The ABCB released the performance based BCA (BCA96) in October 1996. BCA96 was adopted by the Commonwealth and most states and territories on 1 July 1997, with the remainder adopting it by early 1998.

In 2003 a decision was taken to move to an annual amendment cycle with a date of operation from 1 May each year. From 2004, the BCA moved from BCA96 to become BCA 2004, BCA 2005 in 2005 and so on.

National Construction Code

In 2011, the PCA and the BCA came together as a single code – the National Construction Code (NCC).

The NCC provides the minimum necessary requirements for safety and health; amenity and accessibility, and sustainability in the design, construction, performance and livability of new buildings (and new building work in existing buildings) throughout Australia.
It is a uniform set of technical provisions for building work and plumbing and drainage installations throughout Australia that allows for variations in climate and geological or geographic conditions.
The NCC was developed to incorporate all on-site construction requirements into a single code:

NCC Volume One primarily applies to Class 2 to 9 (multi-residential, commercial, industrial and public) buildings and structures.
NCC Volume Two primarily applies to Class 1 (residential) and 10 (non-habitable) buildings and structures.
NCC Volume Three applies to plumbing and drainage for all classes of buildings.

Volume One also comes with a Guide. It is a non-mandatory publication, which has been developed to assist in interpreting the requirements of Volume One. In addition, each NCC Volume contains clearly identified, non-mandatory explanatory information within the text to assist with interpretation of the requirements.
Since its instruction in 2011, many enhancements have been made to the code to make it more user-friendly. This includes moving from a print publication to a free online version in 2015, and moving to a three-year amendment cycle instead of annually, in 2016.
The NCC can be viewed online or downloaded from the NCC Suite.

The future of the code

NCC 2022 will bring about the biggest changes to formatting and structure the code has seen. These changes form part of the Improved NCC useability initiative, making the code even more user-friendly and modern than ever. Enhancements to NCC 2022 include multiple digital formats such as mobile and tablet-friendly options, integration with industry software such as BIM and CAD, and personalised filtering of content.

Regulatory reform and national economic benefits

The construction sector is a significant industry for Australia and represents the second largest sector of small business in the economy. As a result, constraining cost growth and improving productivity has the potential to deliver significant economic benefits nationally.
The building and construction industry has undergone significant regulatory reform over the last twenty years, with a number of these related to the work of the ABCB.

This includes the:

creation of a single, nationally consistent BCA in 1992
move to a performance-based BCA in 1996
consolidation of building and plumbing regulation, resulting in the NCC in 2011
provision of a free online NCC in 2015, and
reduction in the frequency of NCC changes, from a 1-year to a 3-year amendment cycle, commencing with NCC 2016.

Ref: https://ncc.abcb.gov.au/homeowners/history

What is a Class 1 and what is a Class 2 Building?

The answer comes from Volume 1 of Part A6 of the National Construction Code (NCC) 2019:

“A6.1 Class 1 buildings

A Class 1 building includes one or more of the following sub-classifications:

Class 1a is one or more buildings, which together form a single dwelling including the following:
- A detached house.
- One of a group of two or more attached dwellings, each being a building, separated by a fire-resisting wall, including a row house, terrace house, town house or villa unit.

Class 1b is one or more buildings which together constitute—

- a boarding house, guest house, hostel or the like that—

- 1. would ordinarily accommodate not more than 12 people; and
  2. have a total area of all floors not more than 300 m2 (measured over the enclosing walls of the building or buildings); or

- four or more single dwellings located on one allotment and used for short-term holiday accommodation.

Limitation 1:

For A6.1, a Class 1 building cannot be located above or below another dwelling or another Class of building, other than a private garage.”

The below figure provided in the NCC assists in comparing the two classes:

“A6.2 Class 2 buildings

A Class 2 building is a building containing two or more sole-occupancy units.
Each sole-occupancy unit in a Class 2 building must be a separate dwelling.”

“Sole-occupancy unit means a room or other part of a building for occupation by one or joint owner, lessee, tenant, or other occupier to the exclusion of any other owner, lessee, tenant, or other occupier and includes—

a dwelling; or
a room or suite of rooms in a Class 3 building which includes sleeping facilities; or
a room or suite of associated rooms in a Class 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 building; or
a room or suite of associated rooms in a Class 9c building, which includes sleeping facilities and any area for the exclusive use of a resident.”

Generally strata schemes will be class 2, however not always. Where, for instance, the strata schemes is comprised of townhouses, taking the above example, a townhouse would typically be class 1 as it is one dwelling located within one building, to be contrasted with class two, which contains two or more dwellings within the one building.

However, where there is any common property area below, they are Class 2, regardless of whether the common property area is a storey or not. See figure below:

The definitions for each of the building classes can be found in the National Construction Code Volume 1 which is found at https://ncc.abcb.gov.au.

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