Under Part 14 of the new Building Act 2016, building owners are responsible for setting up and conducting a maintenance schedule for essential building services.

The detailed requirements for what need to be included in the maintenance schedule is contained in the Director’s Maintenance of Prescribed Essential Building Services Determination.

For new buildings or alterations or additions to existing buildings, the building surveyor who issues the Occupancy Permit for the building, determines a Maintenance Schedule of prescribed essential services specific to the building.

The regular maintenance of the prescribed essential safety measures such as fire safety, exits and airflow will ensure that they will remain operational throughout the life of the building. Thereby ensuring that safety systems will operate reliably in the event of an emergency, and therefore minimising the risk to the safety or health of the occupants or users of the building.

The Schedule will describe what are the maintainable essential building services of each building and determine the performance level to which each is required to perform. It will also reference the frequency of testing or inspection as specified by the Director of Building Control for each maintainable essential service.

The requirement for all owners to maintain prescribed essential building services first became law in July 2004 under the former Act. For owners of all existing buildings that meant establishing what are the features or measures for their building, performing the required regular maintenance and doing an annual Form 56 process.

You no longer need to do the Annual check, but you still need to maintain the essential building services. The schedule created under the old Act can be used as the ongoing maintenance schedule, or you may wish to have it updated by a Building Surveyor in line with the new Determination.

If you own an existing building and do not have a schedule of maintenance, then it is necessary for you to engage a building surveyor to create a Maintenance Schedule and to determine the ongoing maintenance requirements. The approved Form 46 for new building work may be adapted for this purpose.

There will be random checks (audits) to ensure that the maintenance tasks have been undertaken, records will need to be available for inspection whenever requested by the Director of Building Control, an authorised officer or by the Tasmanian Fire Service.

The type of maintenance required of the essential services will depend on the results of inspections performed and the complexity of the feature or measure included in a building.

There is no direct licensing of persons who perform the regular inspection and maintenance work under either the Building Act 2016 or the Occupational Licensing Act 2005. The level of skills of the persons performing checking of the essential building services will therefore depend on the complexity of each type of service or feature.

For some types of simple safety features an employee could undergo some basic training or induction to understand what they are checking and why this work is being performed. For example, whether the latch on a fire exit door is working correctly and paths of travel to that door are not obstructed could be checked by an appropriate employee.

If, however, the testing and maintenance of a safety feature involves electrical, mechanical, fire protection or other technical skills then a contractor who possesses specialist skills must perform the maintenance.

We assist building owners in achieving compliance with the complex and ever-changing essential building services legislation in the State of Tasmania initially assisting is obtaining a Form 46 Maintenance Schedule.

We then ensure the maintenance of all Essential Building Services are maintained by appropriately qualified personal ensure the risk, health and safety is minimised ensuring all stakeholders are protected.