Each year the housing industry delivers around 160,000 new homes – every one of these new homes is built for someone to live in. At the same time, the industry works on tens of thousands of home renovation and home improvement projects to meet the specific needs of a home owner. Working with customers and home owners is a critical part of doing business and delivering a quality and compliant home.

The residential building industry has a long history of innovation in the development of building materials and products, yet navigating the approvals, codes and standards to allow these innovations to become part of today’s building practices can be difficult.

Practitioners also struggle to keep pace with the rate of change in legislation, regulation, building codes and standards across three levels of government.

The career opportunities across all facets of residential building are vast. While our history as a male dominated industry is real, the reality today is that women and men are participating actively across the industry. Women and men, particularly new industry entrants, need support to grow in confidence, build their future and take up the opportunities that exist in the residential building industry.

The reputation of the residential building industry comes from meeting the needs of the customer. On the whole, the industry delivers on this promise, while recognising that the processes are complex, that hand built homes have imperfections and that building a new home is not something people do every day.

HIA will focus on opportunities to build a credible and trusted residential building industry that is capable and committed to delivering the homes Australians need at a quality they expect.

GOALS

Promote a culture of continuous improvement by:

• Supporting conduct that builds goodwill and enhances the reputation of the industry
• Gaining commitment from government to fund industry education and training on building codes and standards, business practices and safety

Promote innovation in residential building by:

• Engaging with industry based research on building products and materials to stimulate innovation in housing construction techniques
• Advocating for incentives to support research and development in building materials and technology
• Identifying ways to more effectively recognise new technology in building codes and standards development processes

Create an industry for all by:

• Promoting opportunities to increase female participation in the range of industry careers
• Identifying opportunities to remain engaged with our ageing workforce and harness their knowledge and experience
• Creating a safe and supportive workplace for young trainees

Supporting positive customer experiences by:

• Developing a knowledge base for consumers on building processes, what to expect when building and acceptable standards of building quality
• Working collaboratively with regulators to establish acceptable standards of building quality and building approval processes that underpin consumer expectations