Four Corners investigation highlights need for reform
30 August 2019
A Four Corners investigation into
Australia’s
apartment building crisis has highlighted the need for
urgent
reform, says
Engineers Australia CEO, Peter McIntyre.
“There’s certainly a crisis of confidence in the broader community,
there’s concern amongst industry, there’s concern among organisation’s
like ours, Engineers Australia, so this is a pivotal time to take action
and fix it,” Mr McIntyre told the program.
A key recommendation from the 2018 Building Confidence report by Peter
Shergold and Bronwyn Weir was the creation of an engineer registration
scheme for all states and territories.
“One of our concerns is that, right now, in any state or territory other
than
Queensland, anybody can call themselves an engineer – even if they
don’t hold the appropriate qualifications,” McIntyre said.
“If you’re a doctor or a lawyer, you can’t do that. If you are a plumber
or an electrician who works on a building designed by an engineer, you
need to be licenced to ensure you’ve got the right skills and
qualifications. Yet this is not a requirement for engineers, so that’s a
major gap.”
In a national poll commissioned by Engineers Australia in July this
year, 88 per cent of respondents agreed that engineers should be
registered. In
NSW, that figure increased to 91 per cent and is
consistently high across all demographics.
“What a
registration scheme implements is the right checks and balances
to make sure that at all times the people working on jobs that involve
public safety and public confidence - such as the building sector – are
competent to do so,” said Mr McIntyre.
“This will reduce error, will reduce the occurrence of major defects,
will reduce the impact on the insurance premiums and the ability to
obtain PI Insurance. In time, this will flow through to a better
performance of assets, a better position for owner and tenants, and
ultimately improve the quality of the infrastructure we build. You can
be far more confident of what is built and how it’s going to perform
over time if it’s properly designed.”
Mr McIntyre urged governments to act on the recommendations of the
Shergold Weir report.
“Given that the Building Ministers’ Forum endorsed the findings from the
Shergold Weir Report that it received in February 2018, it’s a concern
that each and every jurisdiction is not actively progressing
registration,” he said.
“To each government around Australia that does not have a registration,
we encourage them to give more focus to the implementations of the
Shergold Weir report as a priority. We want action on this issue.”
--ENDS--
Source: Engineers Australia - www.engineersaustralia.org.au
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