Australian Standards are developed by technical committees through a process of consensus and transparency. Standards Australia forms technical committees by bringing together relevant parties and stakeholders from government, business, industry, community, academia and consumers. These participants volunteer their time to standards development work.
To support the performance-based National Construction Code (NCC), Standards Australia develops a set of prescriptive technical standards that are:
- Assessed against and meet the performance criteria of the NCC and national building policy objectives
- Largely prescriptive by nature, to provide a ‘deemed to satisfy’ path to compliance
- Regularly reviewed and updated with the aim of ensuring that the Australian Standards referenced in the Code continue to meet community expectations.
Due to the consensus model of standards development, standards may vary in quality and therefore professional judgement is required in their application.