How to comply with the new regulations for Class 2 buildings

If you are developing apartments in NSW, your project sits under the Design and Building Practitioners scheme. In short: every regulated design must be prepared and declared by a registered practitioner, and lodged on the NSW Planning Portal before the work it covers is built. It applies to design and to construction, and it applies whether you are delivering four dwellings or forty.

The same obligations cover the three regulated building classes: Class 2 apartment buildings, Class 3 boarding houses, and Class 9c residential aged care.

What a Class 2 project has to do

• Everyone must be registered. Architects, engineers and other design practitioners preparing regulated designs must be registered under the scheme, and the builder must be registered as a building practitioner and appoint a qualified practitioner accordingly.
• Regulated designs go on the Portal before the work starts. Each regulated design needs a design compliance declaration from the registered practitioner who prepared it, and it must be lodged before the building work it relates to commences. Variations designed later must be lodged before that varied work is built.
• Nominate your practitioners up front. The developer nominates the building practitioner, design practitioner and principal certifier on the Planning Portal before work begins.
• The full drawing list is published. The official Regulated Design Guidance Material sets out which drawings are regulated designs and which consultant is responsible for each.

The completion notice, and the 12 month number people get wrong

There is a widely garbled rule here worth stating precisely. The 12 months does not apply to your designs. It applies to the expected completion notice, which is a different obligation under a different Act.

A developer on a Class 2, 3 or 9c building must lodge an expected completion notice at least 6 months and no more than 12 months before applying for the occupation certificate. It is made under the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020, and its purpose is to give the regulator a window to audit the building for serious defects before purchasers settle. If your completion date later moves by more than 60 days, you lodge an amendment notice within 7 days of becoming aware of the change. Missing the notice risks fines and a prohibition order that holds up your occupation certificate.

Critical path: facade engineer sign off

The facade engineer is usually the hardest sign off to get, because they need shop drawings for windows and doors before they will declare their design. That means the window and door shop drawings have to be initiated early, well before construction, which in turn means the supplier has to be appointed earlier than most programmes assume. If a Class 2 project is going to miss its design lodgement, this is generally where it starts.

Waterproofing is regulated design work

Waterproofing is the defect we are called about most often in Class 2 buildings, and it is not a trade decision made on site. It is a declared building element, so the design has to be prepared and declared by a registered practitioner like any other regulated design, whether the building is new or being repaired. That catches a lot of owners corporations by surprise when they go to fix a leak: the remedial design is regulated too.

For how to actually design it, the NSW Building Commissioner's waterproofing principles and details are the best guide available, and I have set out the practical version there. If your building already leaks, the full guide to apartment waterproofing remediation in NSW covers the sequence, and the waterproofing remediation service page explains how I work on it.

Good Architect holds a Class 2 licence, and we design apartment projects on the Central Coast under this scheme.