July Release: eConstruction and State Development Application updates
11 August 2021
The ePlanning Program regularly deploys system updates and enhancements to our services on the NSW Planning Portal.
The following is an overview of the enhancements and technical releases for the ePlanning Digital Services for the month of July.
eConstruction
ePlanning and the Office of the Building Commissioner have collaborated to implement digital workflows to comply with regulatory requirements of the Design and Building Practitioner Act 2020. These changes affect building works on Class 2 residential buildings in NSW.
As well as several enhancements, the following key features have been introduced:
- The requirement to initiate a Principal Certifier Appointment (PCA) case type to lodge an Intent-to-Seek-Occupation Certificate (ITSOC) and Strata Bond (SB) case has been removed.
- Enhancement to the ‘Building Work Commencement Date Capture and ITSOC’ case to allow building professionals to declare a ‘Final Set’ of the lodged Construction Issued Regulatory Designs (CIRD) documents and will allow a property developer to lodge a Strata Bond case. These documents will be considered equivalent to ‘As-built’ documents.
State Design Review Panel (SDRP) Online Service
The State Design Review Panel (SDRP) is a multi-disciplinary panel of highly experienced built-environment professionals from industry and government that provides independent advice on the design quality of major development proposals in NSW. It is led and managed by the Government Architect NSW (GANSW).
To carry out these activities the SDRP team must perform several business processes, such as collecting data, scheduling meetings and manual reporting. This approach is labour intensive and does not allow for growth and effective data management. The SDRP team required a digital transformation of their business processes to make their workflow more efficient, improve tracking and reporting, and enhance the customer experience.
The SDRP service will allow proponents to:
- to create a new SDRP application online
- provide contact and project-related information
- upload submission requirements for Panel review meetings as determined by the SDRP team.
Online State DA Service
Key changes and enhancements to applicant screens include:
- When users are selecting an Environmental Planning Instrument (EPI), there is now the option of 'other EPI'. This means the applicant can select 'other EPI' and enter the EPI details when the relevant EPI is not available during the pre-lodgement review stage. Help text for this new ‘other EPI’ option has also been added.
- During the pre-lodgement review stage, there is also now an option to choose 'other agency'. This can be selected by the applicant when the relevant state agency is not listed as an option.
- Updates have been made to the ‘Fee and Payer details – Subdivision’ section during the pre-lodgement stage to include a question about whether the DA involves the requirement to open a road.
- The functionality to be able to 'copy to new application' has been added for all 'completed' cases.
- In Post Consent Certificate (PCC) services, the following four agencies are now available for selection as principal or accredited certifiers: DPIE, Lord Howe Island Board, Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA) and Transport for NSW.
Infrastructure Contribution Reporting
The NSW planning system requires applicants for new development to pay a contribution towards the cost of the infrastructure needed to support that development.
Amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000 require councils and other planning authorities to publish online a suite of documents related to the infrastructure contributions received via development contributions plans and planning agreements. Contributions can be in the form of payments, the dedication of land or the provision of a material public benefit, such as works in kind. The Infrastructure Contribution service has been updated to accommodate these requirements and allows councils and other planning authorities to upload the required documents onto the Planning Portal.
Building Information Certificate (BIC) Online Service
Enhancements to the BIC online service to improve user experience, including:
- BIC applications can now only be lodged with councils that have been onboarded to use this service.
- All BIC applications are now being routed to correct councils.
Major Projects
The Major Projects system has seen a number of enhancements in the July release. These include:
- Pursuant to Clause 50(9), the system will allow proponents to enter details for the invoice recipient, where a recipient is a separate person/entity to the proponent.
- The system will issue a notification to the planner when the proponent pays the fees. On-screen messages have also been added to the ‘Review Application’ section to facilitate application processing.
- ‘Prepare SEARs’ and ‘Completeness Check’ stages will not count towards the end-to-end case KPI or the end-to-end case traffic light.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
Enhancements have been released across a number of API services. More information can be found on the Portal's API and reporting section.
For council and agency users and certifiers, documentation providing more detail on each release has been uploaded to the Knowledge Management section of the ePlanning Digital Services dashboards, for those with access.