Engineering Education Australia (EEA) has partnered with the Office of the NSW Building Commissioner (OBC) to develop two courses on cladding remediation.
The move follows more than 200 NSW residential apartment buildings registering to have flammable cladding removed through Project Remediate.
Online learning modules have been launched and will be delivered through Construct NSW.
Engineers Australia’s Chief Engineer Jane MacMaster said it was important for Engineers Australia to work with regulators to improve the standard of engineering practice in the country.
“Regulators such as the OBC have well-established knowledge in the common risk areas of design and construction through audits and other enforcement activities,” she said.
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“We appreciate this opportunity to jointly produce the training modules and upskill the profession… We’ll continue to explore opportunities such as joint training modules and webinars with regulators to help address common issues and bring lessons learned to our members.”
Construct NSW Program Manager Vanessa Carmody-Smith said the scale and gravity of the issue means it is important that engineers and others in the construction industry have access to the right resources.
“We’re very conscious that over the next three years, flammable cladding will be coming off residential buildings in much larger volumes and at a quicker rate than it has been previously,” Carmody-Smith said.
“We really wanted to work with EEA to get these courses out, because it’s what’s needed right now. There are companies across NSW, Victoria and the rest of the country that need this information, and engineers especially will be at the forefront of dealing with remediating cladding.”
The first of the two-hour online courses, Cladding Remediation: Part A, provides an introduction to façades and cladding, how façades fail, prioritising defects and the recommended course of action to address such defects.
The follow up course, Cladding Remediation: Part B, explores the technical information, using case studies to demonstrate how to address typical façade and cladding defects.
The two courses are the first of four training modules, which more to be produced by EEA and OBC this year.