Who may sign, and who the law keeps off the line
A certificate has a signature on it, and in each state this guide draws, the law names the class of person who may put it there. It also draws a line around that class, and the people standing closest to it are usually the ones most often assumed to be the author: the builder, the inspector, the report writer.
This is a guide published by Dotto, not a government page, and it is general information only. Every rule names the state or territory whose law makes it, with the official page linked in the sources list at the foot of this page.
This is the comparison no single regulator's page makes, because each regulator writes only for its own state. The four sections below put the named classes side by side, then set out what the law in New South Wales forbids the neighbouring class from doing, and finish with the register a reader can check a name against.
The classes the laws name
New South Wales
Registered building surveyors issue certificates under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, act as the principal certifier for development, and inspect building work. 1 The scheme is arranged by class, and the classes named in it are the building surveyor and the building inspector. 1
Tasmania
Building Standards Tasmania asks a consumer to check that their building surveyor's licence is current for work in the state. 2 The state's own consumer guide groups the trades that need licensing, with builders, building designers and building surveyors among them, and it says other kinds of work, with paving, concreting, painting and landscaping named as examples, do not. 3
The Australian Capital Territory
The ACT's construction licences page is written as a lead-in with a list of occupations under it. Under the page's own lead-in, "You need a licence in the ACT if you're a:", one of the occupations the list carries is a building surveyor (private certifier). 4
Queensland
The Brisbane City Council's building approval guidance names the office that organises the approval rather than the document: an applicant is told to contact a licensed building certifier to organise building approval, and to supply scaled and detailed plans prepared by a draftsperson or architect. 5 The QBCC's pool pages name a separate class for one narrow certificate: only a pool safety inspector, licensed by the QBCC, can issue pool safety certificates. 6
What the law asks of the person who signs
In New South Wales the position comes with a status and a set of duties. A registered certifier is a public official, registered by the Building Commissioner. 1 The general obligations include compliance with the conditions of registration, holding professional indemnity insurance, complying with a code of conduct and avoiding conflicts of interest. 1 And the fees are the applicant's obligation: upfront fee payment is required for any work to determine an application for a development certificate or to carry out a function of a principal certifier. 1
The ACT puts its check at a different point in the process. Where residential building work requires insurance, the building certifier must check the insurance is in place before the certifier can issue a building commencement notice to the builder. 7 So in the ACT the insurance check is tied to the commencement notice.
Who may not sign
New South Wales is the clearest case in this guide, because its scheme licenses two classes that work at the same building and gives only one of them the certificates. Building inspectors are not authorised to issue certificates or to be appointed as the principal certifier. 1 Their own work runs under the other class: registered building inspectors carry out inspections of building work with the approval and agreement of the principal certifier. 1
The builder is not the signer either, and the law says so in terms: the certifier does not manage or supervise builders or tradespeople, and does not certify that the builder has met all the requirements of the applicant's contract with the builder. 1
Queensland adds one more exclusion that is easy to misread. Pool safety inspectors do not represent the government: they are typically self-employed or subcontracted by another private business. 6 A pool safety inspector does not speak for the government.
Tasmania offers the least qualified case in the guide. In Tasmania a person writing a pre-purchase report needs no building services provider licence, 8 which is the cleanest way to see the difference between a report and the certificate this site is about.
Where a reader checks a name
For New South Wales the register is public and specific: the class of registration each certifier holds, their period of registration, their professional indemnity insurance and their disciplinary history can be found on the Building Commission NSW website. 1 That is the four things, and the Building Commission's page names them in that order.
For the other states and territories in this guide, the pages it is written from name the licence or the office without describing a public register, so this guide does not describe one either. Tasmania's advice is the plainest of the four: check that the surveyor's licence is current for work in the state, 2 which is a check against the state's own records rather than a register this guide can link.
Which states this guide does not draw
Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory are not drawn in this guide, because the official pages it is written from do not name the office that signs in those jurisdictions. That is a statement about this guide's coverage, not about their law, and their own regulators are the place to check who may sign there. The same four-jurisdiction limit applies to the names of the documents themselves, drawn in the first guide, and it is the reason the line carries a gap rather than a guess.