Fair Trading has recently had queries from industry regarding the treatment of geotechnical reports under the Design and Building Practitioners legislation.
This is to clarify that regardless of the fact that there is a design practitioner category for geotechnical engineering, only work which fits the definition of a “regulated design” – that is, a plan, a specification, or a report detailing a design relating to a ‘building element’ for ‘building work’ (as defined by the Design and Building Practitioners Act) — needs to be declared and lodged on the NSW Planning Portal.
Advice relied upon by a design practitioner but which is not itself a “regulated design” does not need to be declared as a regulated design; but should be acknowledged as “specialist advice” on the design declaration form.
A design from a registered design practitioner-geotechnical engineering generally becomes a regulated design if it is a design in an “area of geotechnical engineering” for a building element (i.e. a load-bearing component of a building that is essential to the stability of the building).
The dictionary to the DBP Regulation states:
“area of geotechnical engineering means an area of engineering that involves the mechanics of soil and rock and the application of the mechanics to the design and construction of foundations, retaining structures, shoring excavations and ground bearing structures for buildings and other systems constructed of, or supported by, soil or rock, but does not include activities involving only geology or earth science.”
In many cases the geotechnical engineer doesn’t design the load-bearing component of a building that is essential to the stability of the building and instead provides a report on the geology including the loadbearing capacity of the foundation material and the hydrology of the site.
If the geotechnical engineering report is limited to the geology or earth science and doesn’t include a design (eg.for the construction of footings, retaining structures, shoring excavations and ground bearing structures for buildings) the report isn’t a regulated design.
However, a structural engineer, when designing the construction of footings, retaining structures, shoring excavations and ground bearing structures for buildings, may rely on geotechnical engineering reports to ensure the foundation material (i.e. so the ground beneath the footings can withstand the loads of the footings, retaining structures etc). In this case the design of the footings or any of the named structures above, is a regulated design declared by the registered design practitioner-structural engineering. The geotechnical report relied on for these designs should be declared as specialist advice by the structural engineer.
A geotechnical engineering report would, for example, become a regulated design when the geotechnical engineer includes in their report information describing how to construct the footing or retaining walls or shoring that sits on top of the foundation material.
The full Cert Alert is available here: https://comms.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/link/id/zzzz6286f6d443c8f482Pzzzz6131c1a38bd77001/page.html