Browse Forums General Discussion Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 3May 26, 2018 6:01 am alwayslearning Who did you go with for your surveyor? We are going to build in Truganina and looking for recommendations. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 4May 28, 2018 12:25 am Very hard to get recommendations as is many builders are putting pressure as subtle as it may be to owners to agree to use theirs when they sign their contract. I applaud you for wanting to use your own appointed as is your right! Call a few surveyors Get quotes Find out how much additional visits cost How they would communicate with you as well as builder Find out if they often are RBS for the sort of build you are doing- Building material if something not so common Joint Townhouse with party wall etc Look around at local builds of other builders and see who is listed on their front fence as the RBS can be an ok starting point. Good luck! Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 5Jun 25, 2018 11:27 pm Mars5 Sorry can't recommend. I started building before you could choose your own in Vic. I hope you do choose your own! Conflict of interest is a problem with builders surveyor. I think it is becoming increasingly difficult for conflicts of interest to have the bearing they once might have. Conflict of interest or not they still have to comply with the latest legislation. http://www.vba.vic.gov.au/__data/assets ... g-work.pdf Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 6Jun 26, 2018 10:18 pm Me Sausage, Anything that can help the building industry meet basic standards is an improvement. I am cynical after my build, and experience in trying to get the RBS to act. The VBA introduced the Legislation on 1 September 2016 that prevents the builder from appointing the private building surveyor to provide some independence. Builders are still pressuring or charming their clients to use their preferred building surveyors before signing the contracts. You’ll see most ‘building companies’ that have site supervisors (vs registered builders) managing the build have the same RBS listed on the sign on the fence. ‘The appointment of the private building surveyor must be made by the owner or an agent of the owner other than the builder.’. http://www.vba.vic.gov.au/__data/assets ... of-PBS.pdf “Authorised agents You can authorise another person to act as your agent and appoint a building surveyor for you. If you appoint an agent, you must provide them with a written authority before they can act on your behalf. However, new legislation that commenced on 1 September 2016 prevents the builder from appointing the private building surveyor. Before you sign a domestic building contract or a contract for building design services, check if it includes an authority for the designer to appoint a building surveyor. You should only sign this authority if you agree to allow the other person (other than the builder) to appoint your building surveyor.” Municipal Building surveyor or private 8Jun 26, 2018 10:42 pm baronx Only issue now is there's hardly any reviews online for good surveyors, as most people are still going with one from the builders' friend-list. I agree What I would do now that there is a choice is use the RBS another builder uses in the area. Or ask my private inspector from last build who he’d recommend. And I’d interview them- don’t have a list of questions but If I was building townhouses ask questions related to this and fire separation etc And More importantly I’d ask about their inspections and how they keep clients in the loop after each inspection about what they identified versus just the builder. And how if as a client I identify a concern ie with private consultant how they would communicate with me as client or inspector. Never going to be perfect but reviews online that are not good will also be something RBS will need to take seriously. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 9Jun 27, 2018 8:59 am Personally I would be going with the municipal surveyor. Our building designer pressured us into going with her surveyor, her reason being that municipal surveyors"require for details of standard construction practices to be explicitly written, which is useless for everyone involved". It turns out one of the details of standard construction practices she considered useless was a site survey. Her surveyor rubber stamped plans for a house which the VBA have since stated he couldn't be sure could be built which you can imagine didn't turn out well for us. My guess is that the municipal surveyor we had had to contact for a report and consent had already given the designer the heads up he wouldn't approve the plans until she had done more work. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 10Jun 27, 2018 5:15 pm baronx Only issue now is there's hardly any reviews online for good surveyors, as most people are still going with one from the builders' friend-list. And that is the big problem. How can someone such as myself as a layman know how good a building surveyor is going to be? It's not like they have eBay seller ratings, Product Reviews or Google ratings. And I reckon half the people who have built new volume builder homes wouldn't even know the names of their surveyors. And even if you did get a personal recommendation, unless they come highly recommended by multiple un-biased sources without any conflict of interest, it could just be that in those particular cases, the build happened to be largely trouble free (or at least the owner was not made aware of any significant problems). I know in my case that I noticed a discrepancy between the certified permit plans and the engineering drawings for the slab and footings (all of them "rubber stamped" by the surveyor). The discrepancy - if not corrected - would result in the slab being poured incorrectly which in turn would have resulted in a very undesirable variation or at best some sort of patch up or repair job before even the frame was put up! I still don't know if the Building Surveyor caught this in time and I am waiting to find out. This was a "builder appointed" surveyor, but done under the regime of me being able to appoint my own (if I had known this when I signed the contract 4 months ago). But with this experience, to me it isn't so much whether they are private / municipal, "builder recommended" or chosen entirely by the owner, what really matters is how good they are. If they are going to miss obvious things, then it really doesn't matter if they were chosen privately or not! It seems to me that to really protect oneself you need to employ a checker of the checker of the checker of the checker!! Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 11Jun 27, 2018 6:41 pm Are you guys talking about private vs council certifier? He won't be checking quality of your build, it is not his job, he will be only confirming that your build dimensions are in line with what has been certified by the council, that you have insulation, etc. He does not have to be good on spotting building quality issues as it is not part of his job. Good trait the certifier would need to have will be flexibility, sanity and open mindset when it gets to variations. Building inspector, on the other side, is someone you would need to hire IN ADDITION to check quality and he would have to be knowledgeable indeed. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 12Jun 27, 2018 6:57 pm alexp79 Building inspector, on the other side, is someone you would need to hire IN ADDITION to check quality and he would have to be knowledgeable indeed. The Building Surveyor hires and works with a Building Inspector. You cannot have two Building Surveyors. One of the many reasons for the abolution of the Victoriam Building Commission was Building Surveyors hiring unlicensed Building Inspectors who were then giving the tick of approval on domestic buildings. Building Surveyors also came under scathing criticism but the public soon forgets. It is worth reading old articles about the reasons for the abolishment of the Victorian Building Commission and the Victorian Plumbing Industry Commission. EDTED 30/06/18. Typo. 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 13Jun 27, 2018 7:06 pm Ah, probably, I am speaking in NSW terms. In NSW: Building inspector = private building inspector who is checking the quality of your build and reporting directly to you. I can't see how it is illegal to hire as many building inspectors (i.e. consultants) as you want. Bulding Surveyor = Certifier (in NSW can be either private or government) - reporting to council, responsible for mandatory building inspections and issuance of the Occupancy Certificate. Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 14Jun 27, 2018 7:12 pm alexp79 Are you guys talking about private vs council certifier? He won't be checking quality of your build, it is not his job, he will be only confirming that your build dimensions are in line with what has been certified by the council, that you have insulation, etc. That's correct and I don't think anyone is disagreeing. But in my case, for example, it literally was a dimensional thing. You could see the error on the paper plans. If you can see an error on paper that a registered, licenced Building Surveyor apparently misses, my view is that is definitely their responsibility as much as it is (or was) anyone else's further down in the chain. But the buck would surely stop at the Building Surveyor since they rubber stamp the plans - errors and all. So what I am saying is if what has been posted above is correct ( that you can't have a Building Surveyor check the work of a Relevant Building Surveyor), who do you get to act as a fifth or even sixth level of error checking (since you have client ==> Builder's draftspeople ==> structural engineer ==> onsite tradies ==> Building Supervisor ==> Relevant building Surveyor). in my case this fundamental error seems to have escaped the whole lot of that chain of command!! but perhaps someone can clarify for me going forward. Can I appoint a private building inspector to check the work over and above the Relevant Building Surveyor (Vic) or is it now too late given the contract was signed months ago and work is already well under way? Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 15Jun 27, 2018 7:14 pm Mr. Sausage alexp79 Are you guys talking about private vs council certifier? He won't be checking quality of your build, it is not his job, he will be only confirming that your build dimensions are in line with what has been certified by the council, that you have insulation, etc. That's correct and I don't think anyone is disagreeing. But in my case, for example, it literally was a dimensional thing. You could see the error on the paper plans. If you can see an error on paper that a registered, licenced Building Surveyor apparently misses, my view is that is definitely their responsibility as much as it is (or was) anyone else's further down in the chain. But the buck would surely stop at the Building Surveyor since they rubber stamp the plans - errors and all. So what I am saying is if what has been posted above is correct ( that you can't have a Building Surveyor check the work of a Relevant Building Surveyor), who do you get to act as a fifth or even sixth level of error checking (since you have client ==> Builder's draftspeople ==> structural engineer ==> onsite tradies ==> Building Supervisor ==> Relevant building Surveyor). in my case this fundamental error seems to have escaped the whole lot of that chain of command!! Error on the building plans to what extent? Can this error to be something he is actually aware of and hoping that it can be fixed during the construction stage, be happy to accept it as variation? Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 16Jun 27, 2018 7:20 pm I'm still trying to establish if they were aware of it or not. Thus far I have told they are "now on the case and looking into it" which suggests they were not aware of the issue and are looking to see if someone else caught it or not. The issue was that the raft slab for the garage has been poured consistent with accommodating a much smaller door than I signed up for. My hope is the Surveyor did catch onto it and directed an "onsite fix" (which to my layman mind would have involved little more than changing the formwork at the front of the garage slab prior to pouring. The sub-floor plans, frame plans and every other plan is correct except for the slab layout plan / footings plan which is wrong. The issue goes all the way back to a drafting error I spotted back in February and asked them to fix prior to the final version of the contract. They fixed the drafting error but it looks like no-one told the footings engineer - or if they did, the footings engineer neglected to update the footings and slab plans accordingly. Bottom line is that if they followed what the slab and footings engineer directed, the garage slab has been poured to only accommodate a single garage sized door. But if they have followed the sub-floor / framing plans correctly then a one-and-a-half sized garage door can be accommodated (as I wanted). Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 18Jun 27, 2018 8:13 pm Yes - all of those are correct (and "rubber stamped"). Re: Municipal Building surveyor or private 20Jun 27, 2018 9:16 pm Well thank goodness for that. They picked up on it before the pour. Not sure who did the picking up though but whoever did I am incredibly thankful to them. I'm kicking myself for even missing it myself as I am usually very pedantic and thorough - and I don't really allow myself the excuse that I am a layman paying customer with only one other house build in my entire life. I can still understand the basics of a drawing. But it just goes to show - we can all stare at paper for months on end and still miss things. All of us were so concerned about getting other multifarious details right that we missed the wood from the trees. I'm really hoping it was the Building Supervisor or RBS who "fixed" this since it would be some good publicity for these people for a change Hi everyone, Looking for some advise. We are about to build an above ground pool in our backyard. There is a private sewer line running under the pool at 1.6m… 0 7644 If you already have a contract, is the inspection cost stated in there? If not they would be forced to issue you a variation which you could of course object to. 12 20486 Building Standards; Getting It Right! Also an expansion joint. It will probably be better to silicon it? What I don't like is that joints between panels are not properly rendered and look ugly. 1 24725 |