This article discusses who must rectify missing fire safety items in new developments, explaining Class 2 fire safety responsibility between developers, certifiers, and body corporates.
Question: When reading the QFES guidelines for a Class 2 building, our new block of units appears to be deficient in a couple of areas. Who Should pay to rectify this?
Our new block of units appears to be deficient in a couple of non-serious areas when reading the QFES guidelines for a Class 2 building. The missing items seem to be things like written evacuation procedures and evacuation signage.
Our Body Corporate management company is telling us that the body corporate has to pay for these to be implemented. Surely the original owner, the developer from whom we all bought our properties, should have sold us our properties with these in place. As this did not happen, surely they should pay for these items?
The developer appointed the Body Corporate management company and I don’t feel a lot of help may be coming our way.
Answer: The emergency plan for a building must be compiled by the occupier and can not be completed by the builder.
The emergency plan for a building must be compiled by the occupier and can not be completed by the builder. In other words, it’s the responsibility of the Body Corporate.
Evacuation Diagrams are usually part of the final certification and should be installed before a place is legally occupied. However. this is depending on the certifier. Some include the diagrams, others certifiers do not.
This post appears in the June 2021 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.
Stefan Bauer
Fire Matters
E: sbauer@firematters.com.au
P: 07 3071 9088
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