Every custom home building project with a building permit has a building surveyor who checks the building project during its progress. However, the role of building surveyor is not that much about the quality of the building, but rather legality and whether the minimum standard requirements are meet.

Good Melbourne custom house builders should have good building practice systems in place to ensure that the relevant standard requirements and good workmanship are met. No independent inspector is a substitute for bad workmanship and unprofessional subcontractors.

For a peace of mind, however, it may be good idea to engage an independent inspector. It will make the custom home builder more conscious of building quality and perhaps custom home builders will pay more attention to details. Regardless of the custom home builders best intentions, some items may be overlooked, and the inspector can pick them up so they can be rectified.

There are, however, a few instances where a ‘dedicated’ building inspector can create more harm than good. Inspectors might, in their report, describe certain defects and cite the relevant standard next to it that describe the defect. However, one of the ‘defects’ we came across in this situation was a ‘cold joint’ in concrete. When a concrete slab is poured, usually concreters pour the trenches first and then the top 100mm of the slab. When the formwork is removed, there may be a visible line between the trenches and the top of the slab. This line is called a ‘cold joint’, and it could be a serious problem in very complex structures such as suspension bridges; however, it’s quite irrelevant with domestic house slabs. That inspector made an already anxious client very worried, and I needed to get an independent engineering report to calm down the client. This is the kind of thing that can happen when an inspector applies standards created for one kind of building to another kind.