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We are the independent approver on your project. We assess your documentation against the Building Act 1993, the Building Regulations 2018 and the National Construction Code, issue the building permit, carry out the mandatory inspections as the work reaches each stage, and, once it complies, issue the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection.

We are not your designer and not your builder. We do not draw your plans and we do not price your job. That separation is the point of the role: the person signing the work off cannot be the person who did it.

Most building work in Victoria does. A short list is exempt under Schedule 3 of the Building Regulations 2018: some small sheds, some fences, some low decks. The exemptions are narrower than people expect. Height, floor area, distance from a boundary and whether the structure is attached to the house can each move a job from one side of the line to the other.

Tell us the suburb and what you are building and we will tell you which side you are on before you spend anything on drawings. That answer costs nothing.

No, and needing one does not always mean you need the other. A planning permit comes from your council and deals with land use, overlays, neighbourhood character and what your title allows. A building permit comes from a registered building surveyor (us) and deals with whether what you are building complies technically.

Where both apply, the planning permit comes first and the permit drawings have to match it. Discovering that after the working drawings are finished is one of the more expensive ways to start a project, so we check it in the first conversation rather than at assessment.

A permit application is a document set, and it is almost always the documents rather than the assessment that hold a job up. For a typical domestic job: plans and specifications, a copy of title and plan of subdivision, the soil report and engineering computations, the energy rating, your builder's registration and domestic building insurance (or an owner-builder certificate of consent), the planning permit if one applies, and any report and consent from council, for example where you are building over an easement or varying a siting requirement.

You get the list for your job rather than a generic checklist, and we tell you what is still outstanding instead of letting the application sit.

Your permit lists them. On a typical house that means the footings before the pour, the steel before the concrete goes over it, the frame before it is covered, and a final inspection at the end. You or your builder give us notice when the work reaches each stage; we attend, inspect, and record the result against the permit.

The one rule worth remembering: do not cover work that has not been inspected. Opening it up again is the most expensive thing that happens on a job that was otherwise going fine.

An occupancy permit is the document that says a building is suitable to occupy. A new home or a new building needs one before anyone moves in. Work that does not create a new occupancy ends with a certificate of final inspection instead, and that covers a great deal of alteration work and most outbuildings.

Which of the two your job ends with is settled at permit stage, not at the end of the build, so you know from the start what you are working towards.

Not indefinitely. A permit carries commencement and completion dates on its face. Generally work must start within 12 months and be completed within 24, and a shorter period can be set where the work warrants it. The dates are on your copy; they are not something you have to ask us for.

If a job stalls, tell us before those dates pass. Extending a permit that is still live is straightforward. Restarting one that has lapsed is a new application.

Yes. Alongside domestic work we take on commercial permits, fit-outs and change of use: a warehouse becoming a gym, a shop becoming a food premises, an office becoming a childcare centre. Change of use is the one people most often underestimate: the building is assessed against the standards that apply to the new use, so it frequently needs work before it can legally operate that way.

Come to us before you sign the lease rather than after. Whether a building can legally be used the way you intend is a much better question to answer while you can still walk away from it.