Building WOF & Compliance Schedules
Why building compliance is important
Building compliance helps protect the people who enter your building by ensuring that safety and essential systems operate as intended.
The Building Act 2004 sets out particular responsibilities for owners of commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings. A building that has certain safety features and essential systems, such as fire alarms and lifts, needs a compliance schedule.
The owner must make sure that these features and systems operate effectively and must sign an annual building warrant of fitness (BWoF).
Compliance schedules
Check if your building has any of the systems that need a compliance schedule, and therefore also requires an annual BWoF.
Buildings that need compliance schedules
Under the Building Act 2004, a building (except a single residential dwelling) requires a compliance schedule and annual building warrant of fitness if it contains any of the following:
- Automatic systems for fire suppression (for example, sprinkler systems)
- Automatic or manual emergency warning systems for fire or other dangers (other than a warning system for fire that is entirely within a household unit and serves only that unit)
- Electromagnetic or automatic doors or windows (for example, ones that close on fire alarm activation)
- Emergency lighting systems
- Escape route pressurisation systems
- Riser mains for use by fire services
- Automatic back-flow preventers connected to a potable water supply
- Lifts, escalators, travelators, or other systems for moving people or goods within buildings
- Mechanical ventilation or air conditioning systems
- Building maintenance units providing access to exterior and interior walls of buildings
- Laboratory fume cupboards
- Audio loops or other assistive listening systems
- Smoke control systems
- Emergency power systems for, or signs relating to, a system or feature specified in any of points 1 to 13
- Systems for communicating spoken information intended to facilitate evacuation
- Cable cars.
Compliance schedule resources
Building Warrant of Fitness (BWoF)
A building warrant of fitness form must be signed by the building owner (or manager) stating that the requirements of the compliance schedule have been fully met in the previous 12 months. It is a serious offence to make such a statutory statement if it is not true.
Council keeps the original copy of the form, and a duplicate copy must be publicly displayed on the premises. The owner must update the BWoF every 12 months.
Building WoF resources
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Certificate for Public Use
If you're building or altering a building that the public use, you can apply for a Certificate for Public Use.
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Independent Qualified Person (IQP)
View a list of Independent Qualified Persons or apply for an IQP or Producer Statement Author.
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Producer Statement
What a producer statement is, the four types of statement, and when and why they are used.
