Departments

Australia’s first passive house built to the highest bushfire rating has been unveiled in the midst of an early start to the bushfire season, as experts gather to advise residents on fire safety. Key points:– Home builders have designed and built an eco-friendly passive home that meets the development requirements for the highest bushfire risk…

A Mandurah tradie has been hailed a hero after he saved an elderly woman from a raging house fire on Tuesday night. Darren Kyle Hunter smashed a glass door and rushed inside the home, risking his own life, to drag the unconscious 60-year-old resident outside of the inferno. “I could hear something or someone inside…

Melbourne’s Neo200 building was plagued by safety failures including fire alarms that didn’t work, a lack of fire-rated doors and a flat battery inside the building’s crucial fire indicator panel, a key fire investigator has revealed. While the 43-storey Neo200 tower only had 1.5 per cent of its facade covered in combustible polyethylene-core cladding and…

An elderly man has died and another left homeless after a ferocious fire tore through two duplex properties in Brisbane’s northern suburbs. Emergency fire crews were called to a home in Sandgate today after concerned neighbours noticed smoke streaming out from inside the property. “It was moving pretty fast – it all went up pretty…

Australia’s building and construction crisis will cost $6.2 billion in remediation and associated costs, according to new research commissioned by the construction union. The independent research by Equity Economics in collaboration with Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) analysed the additional costs to owners of remediating water leaks, fire safety breaches, structural failure…

During March and April 2019, the Electrical Licensing Committee held disciplinary hearings against four licence holders: 1. An electrical worker performed non-compliant electrical work without holding a contractor’s licence and left exposed live parts. The worker’s electrical work licence was immediately suspended until completion of a competency assessment. His external licence recognition provisions were suspended…

A safety observer must be used when there is no reasonable alternative to performing energised electrical work (live work). The only exception to not requiring a safety observer is when the live work consists only of testing and a risk assessment shows there is no serious risk associated with the proposed work. Although safety observers…

Battery powered devices such as energy monitoring systems (pictured below), timeclocks or communication equipment, if not maintained, can leak an alkaline substance onto equipment located below, creating a potential electric shock hazard and damaging equipment. You should be aware of and control this risk when working on switchboards and meter panels near unmaintained battery powered…