Retaining walls

Published 03 October 2011 / BCA 2011

BCA 2009 introduced a new provision that excluded retaining walls from requiring a balustrade or other barrier – when specific conditions applied.

Whilst this is a useful provision, Building Professionals should be mindful that slips, trips and falls is a high risk issue (see Monash University research undertaken for the ABCB) and the consequences of an injury attributed to an inappropriate decision by a designer and/or builder are likely to extend well beyond BCA compliance.

BCA Compliance

3.9.2.2 When balustrades or other barriers are required has two parts:

• Sub-clause (a) that describes where a continuous balustrade or other barrier is required, and
• Sub-clause (b) that describes when the requirements of (a) do not apply.

The key description in each sub-clause is the phrase “delineated path of access”. However, neither the word “delineated” nor the phrase itself is BCA defined.

Reasonable Practice

Whilst the BCA prescribes what is required, BCA compliance is also recognised as only providing the minimum expected standard. The common law risk for designers and builders is that the courts may not see BCA compliance as achieving the “higher” standard that is appropriate and that could have been reasonably expected of Building Professional decision-making.

Builders and designer will make better decisions if they assess the likely risk associated with the decision.

Click the link below to download the full text version and example sketch.

Building Professional Registration or Login Required

To download the file balstrade-barrier-retaining-walls-lpn.pdf you need to login to the As-Built Learning Exchange. If you are a Building Professional and you do not have login access, you will need to register.