Victorian Building Authority (VBA) inspectors visited Warrnambool in September in collaboration with Energy Safe Victoria (Energy Safe), WorkSafe and the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) as part of the Build Aware campaign.
A key focus of Build Aware is to raise industry awareness about safety, environmental, building and plumbing compliance.
More than 100 plumbing, carpentry and electrical apprentices heard from the regulators about plumbing, electrical safety and managing environmental risks during two presentations at Warrnambool TAFE.
The VBA conducted almost 100 inspections and discovered various sites with non-compliant building or plumbing work.
Some of the non-compliance issues related to timber framing, unreinforced masonry work, box gutters and gas multi-layer piping installations.
Inspectors also identified issues with firefighting equipment.
Non-compliant building and plumbing work is followed up by the VBA and rectification costs are paid for by practitioners, not consumers.
Energy Safe focused on educating electrical and plumbing apprentices about important safety and legislative requirements.
A presentation to 60 field workers at Warrnambool City Council focussed on safety campaigns such as the ‘Look up and Live’ and ‘Before You Dig’ initiatives.
EPA spoke to developers at two new estates, conducted numerous joint agency inspections at commercial construction projects, and visited 10 residential construction sites.
This resulted in 16 instances of compliance advice, focusing on common issues like litter and sediment.
The EPA also held an awareness session about the General Environmental Duty and how to manage environmental risks to TAFE apprentices.
WorkSafe inspectors identified numerous safety issues that included a lack of secondary guarding for elevated work platforms, unsafe or incomplete scaffolds and inadequate electrical testing and tagging.
Inspectors issued 24 improvement notices and highlighted a further 25 safety issues that were fixed on-the-spot.
