Commercial builders in the NT will have to be registered and engineering audits will be increased, as part of proposed sweeping reforms to the Territory’s building industry in the wake of a debacle that saw more than 200 unit owners affected by “incompetent or negligent” structural engineering.

The new standards, that will also increase the penalties for builders who fail to perform their jobs, were brought forward after the massive JWS Consultants fiasco that saw the unit owners notified – years after the government was aware of suspicious engineering – that they were personally responsible for their units’ significant structural defects.

Infrastructure Minister Eva Lawler announced the reforms yesterday which she said would provide Territorians with confidence “that their home has been built to a quality standard that meets the National Construction Code”.

That assurance was apparently not provided before.

The proposed reforms come in response to a 2019 incident that saw more than 200 unit owners in nine different multi-storey buildings in Darwin and Palmerston informed by the Department of Infrastructure Planning and Logistics that their buildings had transfer slab defects that could cause major structural issues.

Late last year, the NT Building Practitioners Board found John Scott of JWS Consultants guilty of “serious professional misconduct” for failing to carry out building work in accordance with the National Construction Code (NCC); that he was either “negligent or incompetent” and that he had created “a safety risk for both construction workers and members of the public” on at least one project.

The board was unable to inquire into the bulk of the allegations due to a loophole that prevented investigations into non-compliance allegations made three years after an engineer’s registration was cancelled.

It was revealed by the Building Practitioners Board that the department’s then-director of building control had received a complaint about Mr Scott’s professional misconduct in 2014, but did not refer it to the board for investigation at that time.

It wasn’t until 2017 that Mr Scott was audited following another complaint which ultimately led to the director referring 10 properties to the BPB for review.

The department was then given a final report into Mr Scott’s conduct in January 2018, but inexplicably waited 15 months before disclosing the public safety matter to unit owners.

Mr Scott’s conduct resulted in the maximum penalty of $6,320 and revocation of his structural engineer certification late last year.

Ms Lawler said the government’s proposed reforms would ensure a similar fiasco would not occur again, with a focus on creating a new registration category for commercial builders; establishing a third-party peer review of structural designs above three storeys; increasing departmental capacity to audit works on residential and other buildings and increasing civil penalties for builders and engineers found to be guilty of misconduct.

“We will continue to work with the building industry to ensure we have a robust, high quality industry in the Northern Territory,” she said.

The government aims to have the building legislation passed by the end of the year. The public can comment on the proposed reforms until April 1 by clicking here.