Victoria may soon be the first Australian jurisdiction to mandate the creation of building manuals, but not without caveats.
Last week, the Victorian Housing and Building Minister, Nick Staikos, flagged his decision to push forward the reforms proposed through the Building Amendment (Building Manuals) Regulations 2026.
This requires building manuals to be created at the time of issuing occupancy permits for buildings of class 1b (shared accommodations), 2 (apartments) and 3 (standard houses). The manual would be a “single repository of all relevant information relating to a building’s construction and subsequent building works, including maintenance”.
In the notice published by the Department of Transport and Planning, it said proposed changes would “bridge the information gap between practitioners and consumers”. The proposed regulations would require:
- relevant building surveyors to verify the completion of a building manual before issuing an occupancy permit
- the building manual to contain key final documents, including building permits, council documents, lists of common property assets, and warranties
- critical safety and structural records within the manual, including performance solution determinations, fire safety certificates, and official compliance reports
- owners or unlimited owners corporations to update the building manual at least annually to maintain a living record throughout the life of the building
The reforms come after a consultation draft of the regulation, and its impact statement was made available for public comment and submissions between March and May last year 2025. The department said it received 21 formal written submissions and 722 survey responses.
A submission from Engineers Australia said that the “lack of records and baseline data (which a good manual would provide) can have significant consequences for building owners after occupation, particularly for re-testing safety elements or integrating additional works”.
It said the manual would incur “minimal additional costs” for engineers because they already prepare required documentation as part of standard professional practices and the extra effort required to assemble the manual would be marginal.
Staikos said the following changes to the regulations would be implemented:
- amendment to be deferred to 1 February 2027 to allow the building industry sufficient time to prepare
- the submission requirements of manuals to the Building and Plumbing Commission will be further deferred until 1 January 2028
- early stage approval and permit applications to be removed from the required contents of the manual to reduce administrative costs and complexity
- smaller owner operated class 1b guest houses and bed and breakfasts with no more than three dwellings and a maximum of six guests will be exempt
- building manual obligations to apply specifically to unlimited owners corporations, resolving confusion in multi-tier developments
- additional mandatory inspections at the pre-lining and waterproofing stages have been completely removed from these regulations to enable the development of an alternative approach
Staikos said these changes would “provide more certainty to industry and consumers regarding building documentation obligations, lower administrative burdens, and target the highest-risk residential settings effectively”.
Bronwyn Weir, director of Weir Legal and Consulting, wrote on her social media that the idea was a recommendation by the 2018 Building Confidence Report and that it was “good to see one jurisdiction finally implementing this recommendation, albeit for only some types of buildings.”
She told The Fifth Estate:
“I think it’s pleasing to see Victoria introduce this requirement, but it is a toe in the water. The building manual will be required for class 1b, 2 and 3 buildings only and only where a building permit has been issued for new works, or upgrade works that trigger a permit.
“We have to start somewhere. The manual will be given to the owner and lodged with the BPC. Owners will then have to lodge their annual ESM reports with the BPC each year. Perhaps when the IT is in place at the BPC to support this change, the government will be minded to roll it out more broadly.”
Craig Cant, partnerships and development at Complibuild, added to Weir’s post, saying the regulations are a step forward but don’t solve the real problem.
“A manual full of permits, warranties, and certificates tells you a building exists. It doesn’t tell you it was built right.”
Cant said, but a manual only provides a “photo of a finished surface” and not the “surface prep, primer, cure time, and application thickness” that proves the work.
“Builders are paying good money for CMS platforms expecting this problem solved. Most of those systems store documents. They don’t verify methodology or prove design intent was carried through to execution.”
