ARBV Webinar NCC 2025-20261023_010001UTC-Meeting Recording
October 23, 2026, 12:00 PM
1h 3m 31s
Sally Brincat
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this Architects Registration Board of Victoria webinar. Today we're going to be hearing from Graham Moss, who's going to talk to us about the NCC 2025 version.
My name is Sally Brincat. I'm the Deputy Chair of the Architects Registration Board of Victoria, and Graham is the principal building surveyor and director at the Australian Building Codes Board. He works on the National Construction Code amendment process and has been involved with its production since 2014. His other responsibilities involve the management of reference document development such as Australian Standards and the oversight of technical projects related to the NCC.
We are very much looking forward to what Graham's got to share with us today. Just before I do that, I'd like to acknowledge that we are meeting on Aboriginal lands. Today, Graham is on Ngunnawal country, and I am on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung lands. I'd like to pay respect to elders past and present and extend those respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are joining us today, and who work in your respective organisations, and for whom you might be doing some work around the country. Thank you.
A couple of housekeeping notes. So, today's session is being recorded. The slides will be circulated. The webinar quiz, there's a code on the screen there, but we'll also put a link into the Q&A panel for you. At the end, we'll have 10 to 15 minutes for questions. Chances are we won't get through them all. So, any that we don't get through, we'll theme them and there'll be a series of Q&A in the December version of the newsletter. So that sort of covers-off the housekeeping for today.
Just a couple of things. Certificates for today will be circulated over the coming week because it's Friday. They won't necessarily come out today. And a reminder that the ARBV is currently calling for survey responses for related to our RMIT research project, which is currently underway into the use of AI in architectural practice. So, the survey closes on the 15th of November. We'll put a link for that also in the chat. And then I will see you at the end of the session and we'll do some Q&A. Take it away, Graham.
Graham Moss
Thank you, Sally. Thank you for the introduction. As mentioned, Graham's my name, Australian Building Codes Board. And here's what I'm going to try and cover with you today. I say try and cover because, look, I could read all these out, but you can do that while I speak to you about what we're going to cover today in less than an hour is certainly not going to be everything that's a change between NCC 2022 and NCC 2025. So, because we can't cover everything, I'm going to recommend two things to you.
The first are our lists of amendments. So, each volume of the National Construction Code and the housing provisions each have in the front a list of amendments. And so, these are all the changes, the description of every change that's found in that particular edition. We've been doing this for many, many years now, so I do recommend that as a way of, I suppose, familiarizing yourself with what's new in each edition. It's a handy little resource there.
The second thing I'm going to recommend to you on account of us not getting through everything today in terms of NCC 2025 changes, is our own webinars from the Australian Building Codes Board, our own webinars on NCC 2025. You'll find those on our YouTube channel. You can link to them also through our website: abcb.gov.au.
But nonetheless, I hope today's session is of some value to you of focusing on things that would be of interest of designers, particularly Victorian designers, but at the same time, I understand there's people from other jurisdictions as well. So welcome.
Maybe the Q&A would be another place also that you'd get some value out of today's session. But yes,
There are some select changes for NCC 2025 for designers. We're going to start in the governing requirements at the start of the NCC. These are the governing requirements, Section A, which is relevant to each volume.
I want to talk to you about an initiative which is called the Alternative Referenced Documents Register. This new edition is about which edition of a standard is to be used, like an Australian Standard, for instance. So, I'll get to the change, but to understand the change, I want to, I suppose, describe status quo, how it's done before now. And it's done this way every time, and you will see a reference to a standard in the pages of the NCC. To find out which edition of that standard you need to use, you go to Schedule 2. So here we've got from Volume 2 of NCC 2022 H1D6 about framing. We reference a few standards for framing, including cold form steel structures here, AS/NZS 4600. Which edition of AS/NZS 4600 do you normally use? Well, it's the 2018 edition, and this is the extract from Schedule 2 to tell us which edition to use. The 2018 edition was a useful amendment, actually. For this particular standard, industry was keen to use it when it was published in 2018. But when it was published, there was a problem, and that was NCC 2016, which was the edition of the NCC in force at the time. NCC 2016 referenced the 2005 edition of AS/NZS 4600, not the 2018 edition. So you had to wait this whole year here, this period here, it was a bit actually a little bit more than a year because for various reasons, but that period there had this useful edition of the standard, but it couldn't be used as part of a deemed to satisfy solution. This is the problem that alternative reference documents is here to address,
What alternative reference document is, as the title indicates, instead of Schedule 2, you can use a register of alternative reference documents that's going to be on our website. So, it will be an option to Schedule 2, and as new editions get published and ratified, that will be included on the register. So, for instance, if there was a 2028 edition of AS/NZS 4600, we could potentially include that in the register of alternative reference documents, and it could be used as part of a deemed-to-satisfy solution under NCC 2025. Now, I'm speaking about these alternative reference documents in a sort of future sense, and the reason for that is, although it's permitted now under NCC 2025, we actually don't yet have a register on our website. The reason for that is simply that we haven't had any Australian Standards or any reference documents ratified for use in the next edition of the code as yet. However, watch this space. There are some in the pipeline, and so I envisage
sometime early next year, there should be an alternative reference document registered on our website with a handful of standards that have been published since NCC 2025 has been published. So, there's a handful that are in the pipeline. We should have an alternative reference document register shortly.
We're going to bypass a handful of changes and get up to fire resistance because I think there might be some here of interest to designers.
Firstly, fire protected steel. What is fire protected steel? Something new in NCC 2025. Well, if you go back to NCC 2015 and earlier editions, back then specification 5 was known as specification C1.1. It was the case that most load bearing walls for Type A and Type B buildings had to be built of concrete or masonry.
There's good basis for this rule. King Charles II made a very similar rule about 360 years ago following the Great Fire of London. But 360 years ago, they didn't have fire-rated plasterboard or other modern methods of preventing fire spread or
passive fire protection that we do now. So, we've made arrangements for fire protected timber back in NCC 2016. You may recall those sorts of amendments. What we've done in NCC 2025 is to provide provisions also for fire protected steel framing. As you can see by this table here, it's the same but different. There's many similarities with fire protected timber, which I presume you're somewhat familiar with. Even down to how the protection system specified in the defined term means that you have to provide the passive fire protection for a fire protected seal. Please note carefully, however, that despite being the same, it is a little bit different. On the first row up there, for fire protected steel, you can only use this at the moment in Class 2 or 3 buildings or the uppermost story of any other class. So that's fire protected steel.
I'm going to move on quite quickly now and it is a fast seminar in order to try and get through as many changes as possible in the amount of time we have available, which is why I'm moving quickly on to car park fire safety.
This is some changes in the NCC that arose from a modern vehicles project that we've recently run here at this Australian Building Codes Board. Under the Modern Vehicles Project, we looked at the car park fire safety provisions of the NCC and asked ourselves, are these provisions fit for purpose for modern vehicles? This slide here, or this table here, shows provisions that have been amended by that project.
and also the descriptions that we have for those amendments from the list of amendments. I'm not going to look at these one by one today. Note these down or note them also from the slides when you receive them. But one thing I want to do today is just summarise the changes using this table, which is what those changes achieve. So, the first column in this table shows car park types and features being compared. The middle column is NCC 2022, which is the previous edition, no longer
in play in Victoria, but in other jurisdictions, NCC 2022 currently applies. And of course, NCC 2025 in the right column. As you can see with these highlighted cells where changes have occurred, where there's something new for NCC 2025, you can see that the changes involved sprinkled open deck car parks, that's a new thing. Sprinklers, wherever you have a car stacker, is also a new thing. And you'll also see less concessions for fire resistance levels or FRLs, you might know them as. So, there is more active fire suppression, and more passive fire resistance.
How did we get here? What's the reason that we've got here? Well, the reason is you don't see cars like this anymore. This is a 1982 XE Falcon. Unless you're a nostalgic Ford fan, you might be saying it's a good thing that we don't see cars like this anymore. But the reason I am showing you this photo, and I'm not a nostalgic Ford fan by the way, if that's what you're wondering, but the reason I am showing you this photo is that this Model Ford, was one of the car types used in some full-scale fire testing that led to the fire safety provisions for car parks that are in today's NCC, even NCC 2025.
It's quite fascinating. I'll go into a little detail here for the interest of it. A series of tests were done in the mid-80s by BHP where they built a mock-up of a steel frame car park and they put some cars in it, like the one I showed you previously, and then set one of them on fire. These tests that BHP did typically ran for up to 70 minutes
And try as they might, they could only get at most about 3 cars to catch on fire at any time. And that's only after they wound down the windows to try and get car-to-car fire spread. The first test, only the test car caught on fire. So, there was quite a few conclusions of this test. They were good tests. And one of the conclusions was that vehicle-to-vehicle fire spread is slow. It's not a thing. And this fighting informs the concessions that went into the National Construction Code and have been there up until NCC 2022.
But modern cars are different to the Falcons that were burned in that test. They're heavier, they're bigger, they're covered in plastics, they have much higher calorific potential. And EVs, electric vehicles, are presenting new fire behaviours that need consideration in how we address fire safety when it comes to car parks and cars in general.
Vehicle to vehicle fire spread is a thing, and it's a thing that happens quickly. We don't have to do any more full-scale fire tests, as much as I'd love to have some budget and a project to go and burn some Teslas, that would be fun. But we don't need to do that because real world fires have occurred and these are providing excellent data that we can use, and we did use in our modern vehicles project.
This photo here is one of those modern car park fires that have occurred in recent years. This is a photo taken during the demolition of the Echo Arena car park in Kings Dock, Liverpool. This car park was an open deck car park which complied with the UK's building codes when this fire occurred, and like in Australia, this car park did not require sprinkler protection.
Now, you might recall those BHP tests I mentioned, they couldn't get more than three cars to catch on fire. You can see some more than three cars here in the Echo Arena fire destroyed. Well, the Echo Arena fire destroyed about 1,150 cars more than that. They actually couldn't get a good count on it.
There are quite a few car park fires where modern vehicles were surveyed, and a number of car park fires, and I've got some details of some of them shown here as evidenced by that last photograph. Vehicle to vehicle fire spread is a thing. It also reinforced existing research that was showing that sprinkler protection is very effective when it comes to car park fires. And these, amongst other findings, led to the changes that outlined earlier, where some FRL concessions have been removed and where there's more instances where you need sprinkler protection.
Except, I will point out that it is still the case that an open deck car park that is a separate building does not require sprinkler protection even when there's more than 40 vehicles. So, like the Echo Arena car park, that's a standalone separate building car park. If you build that again in Australia it would still be the case that you don't need sprinklers. And reason for this is that the National Construction Code, really about life safety, not property safety. That's the objectives that we have in our code. And of course, car park occupancy rates are low. Occupancy is low when the occupants are in there, they're awake. All these factors led to the fact that a standalone open deck car park does not present a risk to life as would a car park that's attached to another classification. So, for instance, on the right here, we might have a type A building, open-deck car park below under NCC 2022, sprinkler protection not required even for more than 40 vehicles. However, we've changed that in NCC 2025 sprinkler protection required, noting that these buildings are occupied and there's an opportunity for fire spread to the other parts of the building affecting occupants there.
Car park fire safety, quite a few changes there for NCC 2025.
Let's move now to Access, Egress, and Safe Movement. Like I said, we're not covering everything. So, we have skipped a few, if you like, in going through the order of following the order of Volume 1 provisions. We've skipped quite a few. Now, Access, Egress, and Safe Movement.
I will show you in this part wayfinding signage, a brand-new thing in NCC 2025, new deemed satisfy provision, D3D31. And because it's actually something new for the NCC, there's a new performance requirement also, D1P10.
What this new initiative is about is about providing signs in buildings, predominantly for the purpose or the benefit of emergency response agencies like the Fire Brigade. Having said that, a lot of these signs can be useful for occupants as well, occupants, particularly if occupants are using exits.
What we're looking at are these new stairway identification signs, these new floor level identification signs, and also new sole OC unit identification signs. And in photograph here, we've got a stairway, stairway B identified by a sign in compliance with these provisions, even though this stairway actually precedes those provisions.
Now the requirement for these signs, these D3D31 wayfinding signs, kick in when you have an effective height of more than 12 m or more than three storeys below ground. When the building meets either of these triggers, that's when your building needs to include these signs.
Stairway identification signs are needed. These are going to be installed on the outside of required exit stairways. And also, if the stairway doesn't serve all the levels in the building, the signs also need to indicate what levels the stair serves. So, it's of course useful information for fire brigades. For instance, if the fire brigade.is coming up to stair A here, as indicated on the slide, and once you get to the basement, stair A is not going to be of any use. Brigades can look for stair B, for instance, to attend that fire in the basement. So that's the stairway identification signs on the outside of required stairways.
You'll find also floor level identification signs. These are needed both inside the exit stairway and outside the exit stairway when you leave the stairway. These signs need to identify what level you're on. So, our friend the brigade is on his way to the basement, sees he's on level two. Okay, I have got to keep going.
Sole OC (sole occupancy) unit indicator signs. If the building is Class 2 or Class 3, like an apartment building or a motel, then these sole OC (sole occupancy) unit indicator signs are needed. These are below the level signs, and I need to show the directions of that sole OC units on that floor. Again, of course, this is useful for emergency personnel if they're in a hurry to get to a particular unit.
Also in Section D, I want to talk about this next change, which is in width of exits. And to explain this change in NCC 2025, I want to start with this, it's useful to start with hypothetical floor plates. So, let's pretend we have a single-storey building with an occupancy of 350 people. Now, D2D8, that's that part of the NCC that tells us to figure out how wide our exits need to be in order to accommodate egress, timely egress of all the occupants of an area of the building. So, we go to D2D8 and we figure that, OK, we've got more than 100 occupants. So, we have to start thinking about increasing our exit width beyond the standard meter.
So, with our 350 occupants, we have occupancies over 200. So D2D83 is telling us to use 2 metres for our first 200 occupants. And as long as there's no change in floor level, then we only need another 500 mm for every 75 occupants. So, here's the maths. In this case, we need another metre for the remaining 150 occupants. So
the total required exit width of three meters for this hypothetical floor plate.
So we come to put in our exit doorways. D2D9 lets us discount each doorway for 250 mm off that total 3 metres. So of course, that means that three 750 mm wide exit doors is going to meet our needs for this story. Three doors, 750 mm plus that 250 brings it to one metre, three times one, three metres, we meet it with this. So that's hypothetical floorplate status quo, how we go into our D2D8 calculations.
What happens when we put a wall with an FRL and these horizontal exits in our hypothetical floor plate? Well, the occupancy of the story is still 350, but let's put 75 people in compartment A and 275 people in compartment B. Do we still have enough exits? Well, at a glance, B is looking a bit light. There are only two exits, and that's of course only enough for 200 people, not 275 people. But under NCC 2022, that is actually technically okay. And the reason for that is because D2D8 only applies to a story, a mezzanine or an open spectator stand. There's nothing there about fire compartments and this story in its total is met by those three exits. Not ideal because obviously if you're exiting from compartment B, then it would do well to provide another exit for those extra 75 people. And for that very reason, we've changed that in NCC 2025. We've added the new text here, shown here, and as you can see, we've added fire compartment. So, B, on account of being a fire compartment, needs two and a half metres of exits, and that's easily met by this additional exit door. So, I'm sure that many have been designing in this way. It's good practice, but now this good practice in NCC 2025 is mandatory.
So, we'll move now into Section E, Services and Equipment.
And this next new change is a concession for NCC 2025. Many of you would know that you can't have a fire hose pass through a fire door or a smoke door because that hose might stop the door from closing and doing its job. Except we do have some concessions for that rule in E1D36.
Here's status quo NCC 2022. Those concessions are doorways to fire separated kitchens, laundries, record storage rooms that invite in hospitals and residential care buildings, doorways to plant rooms with equipment that requires separation, and also doorways to shafts. These concessions have been in the NCC for some years because it's unreasonable to have to install another hose reel in these small spaces.
However, these aren't the only reasons why you would have a fire door or a smoke door to a fire separated part of a building. And it's been very common for a performance solution to be prepared, allowing small fire isolated areas to have a portable fire extinguisher in lieu of a fire hose reel.
I know that in my years as a certifier before I joined the ABCB, I actually have personally signed off quite a few performance solutions that look like that. Maybe you've also had experience with performance solutions by separating off small areas and not having to provide a fire hose reel in that area, providing an extinguisher in lieu. It's good, fire practice. It meets the performance requirements, and so it's been included as a deemed-to-satisfy solution for NCC 2025. There's the details there on the screen. The concession there, it's an E1D3. If I separate an area, it's less than 1002 m. It's protected with fire extinguishers. You don't need the hospital coverage. That's one of my favourites actually for NCC 2025. I think quite a sensible addition.
Let's move now to Health and Amenity. The NCC will indeed, its predecessor, the Building Code of Australia, has always had external water management provisions. Our first BCA was BCA 88, issued in 1988, and before then, and it had water management provisions to prevent external water from getting into a building and even then with the states and territories, whether individual building manuals or building acts, they all had provisions about preventing rising damp or rainwater from entering buildings. Now, despite decades of water management provisions, we've also had decades of water management issues in the building environment, and that really does cost millions each year. So, we were asked to do some work to see if the water management provisions of the NCC could be strengthened to address common failures.in buildings.
We did that work and in short, we found that yes, the provisions could be strengthened. So, you'll find in NCC 2025, Volume 1 quite a few changes that make external water management more reliable. One of the biggest changes is that for balconies, podiums and the like, we now require a structural substrate to provide the fall. Not a screen, a structural substrate. Our work showed that screens aren't great in the long term, hence the need in NCC 2025 to use the structural substrate to provide a fall and to get water away from the internal parts of the building.
It's so important to water management to have fall in the substrate to take water away from the internal parts of the building. It's so important we even have a new requirement in B1D2 structure so that when the engineer is designing the building, it's necessary to design for the 10-year deflection of the concrete members, that after that 10-year deflection, we still want to have those falls in the balconies and the podiums in areas of the building like that.
Now, we've been talking to people about these new provisions and doing a lot of consultation in their development. And a lot of people have been asking, how can we incorporate these falls and step downs, but still have accessible level entries? There's a number of solutions to achieve that. And perhaps the most common is to use pedestal pavers, as shown in this diagram here.
The rainwater falls between the pavers. The rainwater meets the membrane on the grate structural substrate below and is drained away. Now there is a lot in part F1, a lot of changes that have been done, a lot to digest, more than we have time for today. So, what I'd suggest is that you have a close look when you're detailing external balconies and podiums. It's also worth mentioning that this water management is a first step. There's future work proposed in continuing that, answering that question, how can the NCC be strengthened to address water failure? And we've been concentrating on outside the building. So, the next phase of the project is to look at water inside the building. So, expect potentially in a future edition of the code, strengthened waterproofing provisions for internal wet areas. But like I said, future work plan, don't worry about it for now. But I do recommend you have a look at Part F1, in NCC Volume 1, NCC 2025 for changes that we've made there.
So, we'll come into the sanitary provisions of the NCC now. And I'll start with the sanitary product dispensers. So, it goes like this. For a long time, the NCC has required that adequate means of disposal of sanitary products be provided in facilities for use by females. In class 3 to 9 buildings, so we're talking about commercial buildings.
Hence, the sanitary bins in female and unisex bathrooms, have been a feature of the code for many years. On the back of that, or of that idea that we have a place for getting rid of the sanitary products, we have now an NCC 2025 requirement for all sanitary facilities to be provided with a bin, even in the men's. The reason for this, there's a large number of men in Australia who use incontinence products. This change is for their benefit.
The next change to mention in F4D4 here to do with sanitary products is that besides a means of disposing of sanitary products, we also require a dispenser for menstruation products in facilities for use by females. So, the female toilets and the unisex toilets now need to receive a dispenser for menstruation products. That's the first change I want to talk about in part F4. The next change I want to talk about in part F4 is table F4D4I. Additional closet pans are required in NCC 2025 compared to NCC 2022.
This is the table that sets out the minimum number of sanctuary facilities for single auditorium theatres and cinemas, F4D4I. At these sorts of venues, there's peak periods between shows and in admissions, and also a famously long line outside the ladies' toilets.
So, with the ABCB did some queuing analysis, we adjusted the number of closet pans so that there should be equal queuing times for men and women at these venues, assuming equal populations. So that analysis was done and we made these adjustments to the table that you can see here with the green showing the new numbers. In short, or in average over the population that you see reflecting this table. That's about a 1 to 1.8 male to female provision ratio on average. It does vary, but that's the average that we're shooting for.
Now, you might be wondering why we didn't increase the number of wash basins to cope with these extra toilets. Well, we did our analysis and it takes a lot less time to wash your hands than to use a toilet, and so analysis showed that the existing wash basin numbers were enough to cope with that increased traffic.
Next change to cover in sanitary facilities is the introduction of the option of all gender facilities. Now, of course, in NCC 2022, there was nothing in that edition of the Standards, there's nothing in any edition of the NCC over all its years that stops you from installing all gender facilities in class 3 to 9 buildings. However, it's always been the case that the NCC requires you to install at least as many as that, which is required by F4D4(1) for men and women. So traditionally, if you wanted to produce, to provide an all-gender facility, and up to and including NCC 2022, you had to provide your facilities to men and women, and then you can provide on top of that all gender facilities.
Now, developers, builders, designers wanted to keep the maximum number of facilities about the same without having to install extra for all gender, be it as you may, they wanted to put a lieu in lieu of an all gender lieu in lieu of traditional one. That's actually now been built into NCC 2025, to make it available as a deemed to satisfy solution. Now, it's an option, not compulsory, nothing in the NCC 2025 obligates a person to provide a designer or a developer to provide an all gender facility. But if you choose to, the options available here in the deemed to satisfy provisions. In most cases, up to half of the toilet facilities can be provided as all gender facilities instead of a traditional male or female facility. But as you can see in this table here, when you get to smaller populations, there's different arrangements where half's not going to work.
Now, it's worth noting that we have some requirements about what that all gender facility needs to look like if it's provided. It has to have one closet pan, has to have one wash basin in the same compartment as well, and this compartment has to have floor to ceiling petitions. It needs to be signed as all gender. Thinking back a couple of slides, like the other sanitary facilities, there has to be a bin for disposing sanitary products. And because this facility is provided for use by females, there needs to be a dispenser at that bank for dispensing menstruation products.
Next, I'm going to talk about condensation mitigation. This is F8D2 in Volume 1 and in the housing provisions it's 10.8.1. Now, you might recall, if you've been designing for some time, that back in NCC 2019, we started introducing changes to address condensation in buildings. And since NCC 2019, we've been just, I suppose, progressively widening the stringency dial up or introducing additional requirements.
to further, I suppose, ease industry into addressing condensation with building responses. So NCC 2019 introduced condensation mitigation for the first time. NCC 2022 introduced some further measures and including for the first time ventilated roof spaces in climate zones 6,7 and 8. And for NCC 2025, we've introduced further measures again. This table outlines the changes for NCC 2025 external wall construction. Same for Volume 1 and also the same for the housing provisions. You can see in the middle of the NCC 2022 column that shows what's required under NCC 2022.
And the NCC 2025 column shows what's different for each of those items. Perhaps the biggest changes to point out is the requirement for a cavity in climate zones 6, 7 and 8. So yes, Victoria is affected, the requirement for a cavity in climate zone 6, 7 and 8. And also that that cavity needs to have ventilation openings, top and bottom.
through which air can circulate. Now, ventilation at the bottom can be provided by weep holes, additional weep holes or ventilation bricks as well, or other openings. At the top, you can place openings there facing straight to external if weather prevention is going to permit it, so maybe tucked right high under the eaves. But it's also the case that the top of the wall can ventilate into a ventilated roof space. So that's a deemed to satisfy, capable way of providing ventilation to the top under NCC 2025.
It's condensation mitigation for external walls. Condensation mitigation roofs. The roof provisions are quite different in NCC 2025 compared to NCC 2022, mainly because we now split them into two, depending on whether the insulation is parallel with the roof plate, like on the left here with that style roof, although the insulation is not parallel with the roof plane like on the right in the, I suppose, the traditional or usual method where you've got a flat ceiling and a pitched roof above.
Different requirements for different ventilation for different roof types. As you can see, we've got a parallel one, we're looking at a greater ventilation, or where we've got a low pitch, we've got the greater ventilation at the 20,000 mm2/m, as measured in the longest horizontal plane in plan. At 5000 mm2 /m, typically at the top, this can be achieved through even the bridge, just below the bridge, if that's what your roof has, or for other openings, perhaps in the gable. I do recommend that you have a close look at F8D5 and 6 and also 10.8.1.in Volume 2, particularly because we've introduced some additional explanatory information this year also, addressing some common questions that were coming out of NCC 2019, especially what is the longest horizontal dimension. We've even got calculated work examples in new explanatory information. And NCC 2025, addressing the questions that we're getting about condensation mitigation.
So, we move now into energy efficiency, of course, up to Section J in Volume 1. And you probably guessed we're getting closer to question time, but I will take us through energy efficiency. And I'll start by covering what's possibly been our most asked question since introducing NCC 2025.
That question is, what's happened to Class 2? What's happened to the apartment buildings? And funnily enough, it usually comes from somebody looking up J9D4 facilities for electric vehicle charging equipment. Somebody's looked up J9D4. They want to figure out how many EV charges they need for their apartment building.
And obvious by its absence is Class 2. It's disappeared. What's happened? They ring us up and they ask us what happened. It wasn't J9D4, but I'm actually aware of a seminar that occurred for another part of Section J. And the poor presenter had actually gone through a presentation saying, well, okay, Class 2 has disappeared.
It hasn't disappeared. What happened? What happened for Class 2? Well, the building ministers meeting is what happened. Back in October of 2025, the building ministers met to finalise NCC 2025. And among other things, they decided to not go ahead with residential energy efficiency changes. So, of course, that meant that there wasn't a lot of change in, well, we weren't planning a lot of change in Volume 2 or the housing provisions for energy efficiency, but we had been planning quite a bit of change for commercial buildings in Volume 1, including Class 2. Minister said No to the housing crisis, we're going to keep things status quo for now in for apartment buildings.
So, because residential energy efficiencies were not going to be introduced at this time, we went and put a little note at the start of Section J to direct users to NCC 2022 for Class 3 buildings. When people ring us up and say, what happened to Class 2? We say, have a look at the note at the start of Section J. Instead of using NCC 2025, you actually need to just go and pick up NCC 2022 and find your provisions there. And people might say, okay, that's a little bit confusing, but this is the precedent way or the way that we use the NCC to direct users to another part, for a section or for a part, to another edition of the NCC. It's been used this way for some years now. And when you think about it, the only other alternative would be to effectively double the size of Section J by having each provision, say, for Class 2, do it this way, and for the remainder classes, do it this way, the change in NCC 2025. So, we could have doubled the size of it, made it very complex and troublesome to read. This is the present way, and we think the best way of addressing the, I suppose that fork in the road. Class 2, go to NCC 2022. Class 3 9, go to NCC 2025.
So, staying in Section J, come up to J9D5. Further direction of ministers, I will say back in J9D4, which I did have on the screen just now, there's no change to EV charging for any building, Class 2, 3, 4, 5, any commercial building as well. But there are some changes for commercial buildings for J9D5 when we're talking about solar photovoltaic systems, and batteries.
Previously under NCC 2022, you had to have roof space and switchboard space to facilitate future solar installation. Now, NCC 2025 introduces a new requirement for commercial buildings to have solar panels. You get two options. You have to cover the entire roof with solar panels, though we do have some concessions and exemptions for roof lights, roof plant, and things like that. Or alternatively, you can size your solar array based on the condition space of the building. You get a spots per square meter in table J9D5A based on the climate zone and the building classification.
I'll also mention on this slide about solar readiness for buildings with gas. Now, we're not banning the use of gas in buildings, but if you're designing a building and it proposes the use of gas, then if, for a building service that is, then your solar panel system needs to generate additional power, and there's a table used to calculate that, and that additional power is to facilitate future electrification when and if that gas system is removed. So, there's some of the changes in Section J and certainly the ones that we're getting most questions about.
Sorry, I forgot about this slide. Future electrification readiness. There's other parts of gas as well where we've put in these requirements that need to have reserved space capacity for electrical switchboards, plant rooms and service risers for buildings that include gas. Details are in the provisions for what that extra space looks like, even down to the number of square metres that you need in your plant room. So, I do recommend you have a close look at J6 and J8 when designing commercial buildings. That brings us to the part of the presentation where we can have questions. And so, I'll hand back to Sally. Thank you very much, Sally.
Sally Brincat
Thanks, Graham.
Okay, so I'm going to work through some of the questions. There's a couple of questions that actually are around a bit of a theme. So, I'll probably start with that one and we'll deal with that at a thematic level. And there's quite a few technical queries around the provision of gaps in fire rated walls and detailing for concrete and those kinds of things. I guess, rather than deal with the specific technicalities, because they're obviously very project specific. But I wonder, Graham, if you could talk to us a little bit about what's the best way for practitioners to actually engage with the ABCB around feedback, and, or how to receive some very technical, I guess, input into their project to kind of deal with some of these really very technical issues that are arising when some of these changes occur.
Graham Moss
Yes, certainly, Sally. Yes, so feedback on provisions at the NCC and technical inquiries, project specific inquiries, etc. We do have what's known as our technical inquiry service in the NCC. I mentioned that we have been getting a lot of questions on what happened to Class 2 in Section J, NCC 2025, and how those questions come to us are via our website: abcb.gov.au. So, I can't remember the exact part of that website, but there is a contact us feature where you can submit a technical inquiry to the Australian Building Code Board. Now, that's the honest answer to the question. That's how you contact us in order to get an answer to a technical question.
At the same time, I'm going to say that I do apologise in advance. We are a small agency inundated with questions. They do come in usually at the rate of about 14 to 15 questions a day. Yet we have a very small number of staff available to answer those questions. And it is just a fact that the backlog just grows faster than we can deal with them at present. I am in the process of getting advertising together so that we can help address that backlog. So, I tell participants today that yes, that's how you can ask a question of us, but I do apologise in advance that it is difficult to get through to us.
For that plain reason that I mentioned that when you think about it across Australia, you have many projects occurring at any time and it's the architect, the builder, the certifier, the owner might contact us with a question about exactly the same thing.
That's why I feel that we're quite inundated, but that's how you get questions to us. So, I do recommend also to your friendly local building certifier, particularly they are the ones that have jurisdiction, I suppose, authority on that particular project.
As to feedback on the National Construction Code. A fantastic thing about what we do here, and I say this as somebody who's been in industry and have been through this process and seen changes to the NCC myself even before I went and worked at the ABCB. And that is our proposal for change process. So, if participants today, have a problem with the NCC, if they think there's a deficiency with the NCC, sorry, I shouldn't say should you think there's one. If you uncover a deficiency with the NCC, the way to let us know is our proposal for change process. So again, abcb.gov.au, propose a change, is a website on our, a sub website on our website, or you can just Google: ABCB PFC. That's the first hit should be our proposal for change process. Now you can submit a proposal to change the NCC or to have a deficiency of the NCC looked into. So that's our feedback loop if you like.
And I'll take a selfish moment here to advise of an upcoming consultation process that I'm actually running for one of my projects at present. It should be on our website very shortly. I was hoping it would be on by today, but I haven't been advised it is or not today. But if not today, possibly next week, you'll find on our website a link to our consultation page. And on our consultation page, I'm seeking feedback actually on the NCC. I want to know which parts of the NCC are difficult to understand and difficult to interpret. And this is part of, I suppose, you could call a no regrets activity in identifying parts in the NCC that could be improved and therefore could be changed to address productivity in the industry. And these are outcomes that attentive viewers might understand arise from our productivity investigations that had occurred in recent times. So those are feedback loops and I do thank you for the opportunity to plug my little consultation that I really hope to get a lot of feedback on.
Sally Brincat
We might get that added into the newsletter wrap up of this particular webinar. I had another question from Tim and a second question from Patrick that is asking around the role of performance solutions. So obviously performance solutions over the years have become quite necessary to sort of get around some of the delay, I guess, in bringing things into the NCC. And some of this year's provisions have gone away from that, which I thank you for. I guess the question is more about, is there a focus on reducing reliance on performance solutions? And is that a focus for the ABCB or does it just sort of come about as it occurs? And then Patrick's point specifically around that is around 9A buildings, so patient care areas. So, there's a preference to admit fire hose reels. If the buildings are fully sprinkled, is it possible for this to become a deemed to satisfy in lieu of a performance solution? As we know, they take a lot of time and money and shenanigans we'd all rather not deal with.
Graham Moss
Understand. Yeah. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Tim. If I go to the next part of my consultation that I hope your newsletter might do, another part of my work is looking for common performance solutions that can be turned into deemed satisfied provisions or somehow addressed, so that their need time and time again isn't required. That's another part of that same consultation. Hopefully today, possibly next week, you'll find on our website. However, I will say that and, sorry, I think it was Patrick that was asking about the Class 9As, the hospitals. So, the productivity work that I mentioned is a residential focus. Australia's housing, a way of addressing Australia's housing crisis, getting more dwellings built quicker. So, we are focusing on
solutions for residential buildings and even NCC 2025 includes deemed satisfied pathway for externally insulated finished systems, CIFS rendered foam cladding, which is a way of preventing the necessity for poor solutions. And we are looking
for more of those. And that, yeah, so despite the housing focus, I am inviting feedback on common performance solutions in other classes of building also. And, I am actually aware of that 9A patient care area issue and also other 9A common performance solutions, for instance, how doors are controlled. Looking forward to an opportunity to address those also, once we've addressed this housing focus, which is basically where the Australian Government, I'm part of the Australian Treasury, our Minister is keen to address housing, and so that's our focus. Eventually, I do have to assist form solutions in the hospitals, like you mentioned there, Patrick, but our proposal for change process is a way of identifying common form solutions that might be turned into deemed to satisfy, but also that specific consultation as I mentioned, so please look out for that, and I do look forward to feedback from members on that one.
Sally Brincat
Fantastic. Thanks, Graham. Michael had an interesting point to make around the sanitary disposal and dispensing provisions. And his point was that this is usually a commercial arrangement between the building owner and, you know, facilities management, perhaps. Is the inference then that this is now a requirement for the occupancy permit?
Graham Moss
I've been using the National Construction Code or the Building Code of Australia, of course, for the best part of two, well, more than two decades. And as a, I suppose, a seasoned user, I have favourite provisions and I have provisions that are not my favourites. Maybe, I'm just one of these NCC geeks. If that's you, I'm glad to meet you. If that's you, you might understand how we don't get a lot of conversation in parties. This provision that has been in there for a long time, that you have to provide a means of disposing of sanitary products in the ladies in the unisex toilets, that's been in there for a very long time. And yes, that's been addressed by commercial arrangements. It is not my favourite provision. I hate it for the very reason that Michael mentioned. It's a commercial arrangement that's very difficult to inspect at a final inspection. And it's also a commercial arrangement which could stop in the future. And how am I, as a certifier, going to sign off that this building complies with the National Construction Code? And I can't be confident that
six months from now that XYZ bin service is going to be continuing XYZ bin service. So, it's always been there, and it continues to be there, and it continues to be there more. So it may be that your certifying authority is when signing off the building is working on trust, that it's going to be indicated. It might be that certifying authority is indicating it's receiving a letter or some sort of undertaking by the building owner or manager that this service will be done. That might be how they're satisfying themselves that the service occurs. However, when it comes to the dispenser,
I'll put it this way, and I'm not inviting gaming if you like, but I'll just let members know that if you read the provisions as they stand in Section F of NCC Volume 1, NCC 2025 Volume 1, it's only the dispenser that's necessary. There's no arrangement there. The NCC is not requiring that that dispenser be stocked. It just requires that dispenser be there. And if you really read the provisions and really put it technically, it could be just a shelf. It might be a custom box that's designed to dispense products for free or for a client. I don't know. But as I read it, I can't help but feel that if I'm on site and I've come to a shelf and the builder points at the shelf and says, that's my dispensing facility. I've read the provision. I think, well, OK, that probably is it. That's met those requirements. Now, I'm not suggesting that gaming occur and that you go and install shelves. It'd be nice to see the custom products and of which there are many, but it's not your responsibility to ensure that those are stocked, beyond the final occupation certificate building permit stage.
Sally Brincat
Okay, that's an interesting workaround. Thanks, Graham. I've got one more question and then I'll just do a bit of a wrap up. So, anonymous user, there's a question around condensation management or mitigation in roofs with cold roof structure.
Will there be future adjustments to take into consideration how the effectiveness of insulation is reduced by air movement?
Graham Moss
This one fascinates me personally. Again, NCC geek. As anonymous user and maybe, and I'm sure many members are aware that air movement in a space reduces the insulative effect of that space. I had the good fortune of speaking with a director of a
research facility, I won t say which one, but one that's focused on environmental research. We are starting to wonder to what extent that discount can occur, and I see opportunity for further research in that area to really concrete how the NCC should respond to discounting ventilation, or I suppose, penalising the effects of ventilation on installation. So, when an expert tells me, yeah, we should do some more work in this space, I listen and say, okay, I think it would be great if we had the opportunity to do more work in this space. And that's on my little list of what I'd like to get around to one day.
But a long way of answering the short question is that yes, it is something that you do need to worry about under NCC 2025 and in previous editions as well. But if I've got a air moving through a space, I have to do my calculations on account of that air moving through that space and I'm not going to enjoy the full benefit that would otherwise come from a non-ventilated space, aerial space or wall space. So, I need to meet those target R-values. But hopefully watch this space in future editions. There might be some opportunity to really investigate the science behind that.
Sally Brincat
Fantastic. So, what I'm getting as a particular theme out of today is that there's lots of people who would like to provide feedback and there's opportunities to do that and we'll put those in the newsletter as well. And I would encourage people who've had particular questions to reach out if you feel like you need some very specific
advice from the ABCB, but that it is really an open invitation for us as an industry to actually engage at the source of these things before they get into the document that we're all wedded to. So, I think that's a good reminder that we can help to modify and improve the systems under which we operate. So that's probably my parting message.
I would just remind everybody about the RMIT research. I note that there is a question in there and someone will consider the question about that particular research survey and change it if it's possible. I don't know whether it is.
Our next newsletter is coming out in December. Please read them. They're full of lots of interesting and useful bits of information. And I also note the request for a Class 1 focused NCC webinar and we'll put it on our list. And as you know, the ARBV provides free, very relevant and very good, if I do say so, very good CPD. So thanks everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate there's been over 1000 people logged in at various points today. So that's great. Thanks everybody for joining us and we will see you next time.
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