September 2026

Construction code modernisation

What members need to know

The National Construction Code is being modernised. Consult Australia supports making it simpler and more consistent, without reducing the flexibility that allows designers to exercise professional judgement and innovate.

The Australian Government is reviewing the National Construction Code (NCC), with a final report due later this year. Recent debate about the size of the NCC – which runs to 2,200 pages – has attracted headlines.

“We absolutely support removing unnecessary complexity,” says Consult Australia’s Head of Policy and Government Relations Kristy Eulenstein. “But the issue isn’t how many pages are in the NCC. It’s how well it works.”

The Treasury’s Interim Report identifies a broad suite of ‘immediate actions to consider’, many of which reflect Consult Australia’s submission to the NCC Modernisation Project. These include:

• Free access: Remove barriers to access, including paywalls on referenced standards, to improve understanding and compliance.
• National approach: Reduce duplication, ambiguity and unnecessary complexity caused by overlapping and inconsistent requirements across the Code, Australian Standards, state and territory variations.
• Digital accessibility: Support modern digital tools for navigation and compliance (looking beyond the NCC, as appropriate).
• Fewer variations: Encourage states and territories to recommit to reducing variations and upholding nationally agreed timeframes.
• Better data: Improve data sharing across jurisdictions to create feedback loops on the use of performance solutions, complaints, evidence of defects and emerging risks.
• Transparency and accountability: Agree clear roles, responsibilities and lines of accountability for ministers, policy makers and technical bodies.
• Industry-led change: Introduce a clearer process and transparency for industry-led change proposals, including the composition and role of technical committees.
• Risk-based regulation: Adopt a more riskbased approach to regulation and compliance.
• Proportionate compliance: Address concerns that lowrisk and standardised buildings are subject to disproportionate compliance effort and cost.

Room to move

The cost of performance solutions over deemed-to-satisfy (DtS) outcomes are central to the discussion about the Code’s complexity and length. The NCC is performance-based. Practitioners can use established either the DtS provisions or develop a Performance Solution that achieves the required level of performance another way.

“That flexibility is important because design, and therefore construction, is complex,” Kristy says.

“The NCC can’t possibly anticipate every building, material or technology. Performance Solutions give designers room to exercise professional judgement and innovate, while still meeting the required standard.”

To balance the cost and benefits of performance solutions, Consult Australia calls for proven innovation to feed back into the NCC, as happens in other countries. Where Performance Solutions become commonplace and repeatedly demonstrate their effectiveness, there should be a pathway for them to become DtS provisions, Kristy notes.

The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) would need to take a stronger national leadership and coordination role for this to occur, and would need to consider how NCC updates are developed and rolled out.

“The ABCB should empowered to undertake research into the risks, costs and market impacts of proposed changes, and to provide better industry education,” Kristy says.

Standards in sight

The move to free read-only access to the more than 120 standards referenced in the NCC is progressing. “We have consistently called for free access because if practitioners are required to comply with a standard, they should be able to read it.”

Kristy recently met with Standards Australia in her capacity of Vice Chair of the Australian Construction Industry Forum (ACIF).

“It is now clear that the free access will be more limited than Consult Australia members have called for, and available as read-only un-editable PDFs. I urge members to engage with the free access when it becomes live to test the access and value.

“The key question will be whether that limited access delivers the policy outcome sought by the government of better designs and safer builds. If not, we will push for the next stage of access: fully editable and printable versions.”

A detailed summary of the meeting with Standards Australia can be found in ACIF’s newsletter.

“We will continue engaging with the Modernisation Project as Treasury works towards its final report. As always, we support reforms that remove unnecessary complexity but keep the flexibility that allows good designers to do their jobs – and we look forward to working collaboratively with government and industry to make this happen,” Kristy concludes.