Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Building inspectors: workers compensation requirements in Australia

Statutory cover for injury to workers, arranged through each state or territory scheme rather than on the open market.

Data as at

Verified requirements, by state

  • Licence liability condition: Yes, and it is enforced with a penalty. A certifier in NSW must hold professional indemnity insurance complying with Part 3 of the Building and Development Certifiers Regulation 2020. The policy must cover all liabilities from the time the person first became registered, protect against claims of professional negligence or omission as defined by the Regulation, and leave no gaps in coverage unless registration is suspended and no certification work is being done. Carrying out certification work without adequate insurance carries a fine. The retroactive-cover requirement is unusual and stricter than most occupations face. The instrument is named so the position can be checked; the commencement date of this particular requirement was not separately traced, so the date on this fact is the date it was confirmed current rather than the date it began. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: To maintain registration, not merely to obtain it. A certifier must provide proof of professional indemnity insurance in the form of a certificate of currency requested from the insurer on company letterhead. The instrument is named so the position can be checked; the commencement date of this particular requirement was not separately traced, so the date on this fact is the date it was confirmed current rather than the date it began. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Registration as a certifier under the Building and Development Certifiers Regulation 2020 (NSW), administered by NSW Fair Trading. Note the vocabulary gap: the regulated role is "certifier", so someone searching for a "building inspector licence" in NSW is looking for a title the scheme does not use. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Yes. A registered building practitioner must hold professional indemnity cover indemnifying them against civil liability for any claim first made against them during the period of insurance — a claims-made structure, which is why continuity of cover matters more here than in occurrence-based classes. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Victoria Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: Unusually strict, and it runs to the client rather than the regulator: before taking a deposit or any money, the building practitioner must give the client BOTH a copy of the policy and a certificate of currency. Most jurisdictions ask for the certificate alone. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Victoria Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: The Victorian building regulator, which registers building surveyors and building inspectors as building practitioners alongside quantity surveyors and engineers. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Victoria Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Yes, with a stated figure. All QBCC Completed Residential Building Inspection licence holders must carry professional indemnity insurance, at a minimum limit of indemnity of $1 million for any one claim and in total during any one period of insurance. QLD · effective 1991-12-01 Queensland Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: A current certificate of currency at application and again every twelve months on renewal of the licence. QLD · effective 1991-12-01 Queensland Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: The Queensland Building and Construction Commission, which issues a Completed Residential Building Inspection licence. Note the title again: Queensland licenses the inspection, not a job called "building inspector". QLD · effective 1991-12-01 Queensland Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Not applicable — this is not a registered class in Western Australia, so there is no registration for an insurance condition to attach to. Where insurance does bite in the WA building services scheme it is on two contractor families only: building surveying contractors and building engineering contractors. Builders and painting contractors carry no insurance requirement in the registration Regulations at all. WA · effective 2026-08-25 Western Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: None, since the work is unregistered. A building surveying contractor, by contrast, must satisfy the Board of the insurance requirement at application, and registration runs for three years with a renewal window opening twelve weeks before expiry. WA · effective 2026-08-25 Western Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: A pre-purchase building inspector is not a registered class in Western Australia. The prescribed list of registration classes under the Building Services (Registration) Regulations 2011 is exhaustive, and the word inspector appears nowhere in it. The registered classes cover building practitioners and contractors, building surveying at level 1, level 2 and technician grades, building engineering across structural, fire safety, fire systems, civil and mechanical streams, and painting. The nearest registered analogue for statutory inspection work is the building surveying stream. WA · effective 2026-08-25 Western Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Yes, but with no prescribed amount. An accredited professional must be covered by a form of indemnity insurance scheme approved by the Accreditation Authority, and each individual must assess their own circumstances and ensure their level of cover is adequate given the nature and amount of work undertaken. The judgement is delegated to the practitioner. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: Cover under a scheme approved by the Accreditation Authority, self-assessed for adequacy. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Not a government licence — an ACCREDITATION. Building certifiers in South Australia are accredited professionals under an accreditation authority rather than licensed by a department, which is a genuinely different mechanism from every other state on this site. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Yes — professional indemnity insurance is listed among the minimum requirements for a building surveyor licence, alongside the qualification. No minimum amount was located and none is stated here. TAS · effective 2026-08-24 Tasmania Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licence evidence required: Not established from the published requirements beyond the fact that cover must be held. TAS · effective 2026-08-24 Tasmania Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: Consumer, Building and Occupational Services, which licenses building surveyors as building services providers. TAS · effective 2026-08-24 Tasmania Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licence liability condition: No insurance condition on the licence. Only four of the ten ACT construction occupations carry one — building assessor, building surveyor, plumbing plan certifier and works assessor — and all four are professional indemnity, not public liability. The trade classes carry none. What does apply to every licensee, including this one, is section 47 of the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004: before providing a construction service the licensee must give the client evidence of what insurance they hold. The Act treats advertising the cover as sufficient, and gives the example of details on the vehicle used to provide the service. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: Nothing is lodged with the registrar, because there is no insurance requirement on this work to evidence. The disclosure duty in section 47 still runs to the client rather than the regulator: whatever cover is held has to be shown to the client before the service is provided, and a fidelity certificate counts as evidence of insurance for that purpose. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Pre-purchase building inspection is not a separately licensed occupation in the ACT. Section 7 of the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004 sets out the complete list of construction occupations in the ACT, and there are ten: builder, building assessor, building surveyor, drainer, electrician, gasfitter, gas appliance worker, plumber, plumbing plan certifier and works assessor. The phrase building inspector does not appear in either instrument. The nearest licensed classes are building assessor, which covers energy efficiency assessment only, building surveyor, which is a certification role, and works assessor. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Yes. Practitioners must provide evidence of insurance and of renewals, with the qualification, experience and insurance requirements for each registration category set out in a Ministerial Determination. The Determination itself was not retrieved, so the requirement is established and its terms are not. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licence evidence required: Evidence of insurance at registration and on renewal, and the Board must be notified of changes to eligibility. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: The Building Practitioners Board of the Northern Territory. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25

What contracts commonly ask for

Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.

What this cover costs

This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.

Sources