Maintaining your design practitioner registration

Design practitioners must be registered under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (DBP Act) to make compliance declarations for regulated designs before they are lodged on the NSW Planning Portal by the building practitioner, and before work starts on regulated buildings (currently class 2, 3 & 9c). 

Find out how to register on the design practitioner registration page. 

Design practitioners have additional obligations under the legislation to maintain their registration. These are outlined below. 

Code of practice 

Design practitioners must comply with a code of practice that sets out required professional and ethical standards. The Code includes the duty to: 

• act in a professional manner
• act within their level of competence and expertise
• maintain satisfactory level of competence
• avoid conflicts of interest
• maintain confidentiality. 

The Code of practice is in Schedule 4 of the Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021. 

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) 

Design practitioners must: 

• complete at least three hours of approved continuing professional development for each year of registration
• keep written records, such as certificates of completion or records of attendance, for five years. 

Courses are available from the  Construct NSW Digital Learning Platform. 

Download the CPD guidelines for more information to help you meet your requirements. 

Record keeping 

Design practitioners must: 

• keep records for at least 10 years from the date the building work was completed. This continues to apply even if the practitioner ceases to be a prescribed practitioner
• keep a record of each project for building work for which a compliance declaration was issued. The record must include:
• the number of compliance declarations provided by the practitioner
• the class of building
• the name of the developer in relation to the work and the developer's place of business
• the name of the local government area in which the project is located
• the address of the project including the lot and deposited plan number
• the name of the person who engaged the practitioner
• the name of the owner of the land or premises
• the name and registration number of other registered practitioner involved in the project.
• keep copies of a regulated design for which a design compliance declaration was provided by the practitioner
• keep copies of the design compliance declaration provided by the practitioner. 

More information about record keeping is published in Part 7 of the Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021. 

Insurance 

Mandatory insurance requirements for registered design practitioners and principal design practitioners commenced on 1 July 2022. 

A registered design practitioner must ensure that all design work carried out by the individual as a registered practitioner is indemnified under a professional indemnity policy. Similarly, a registered principal design practitioner must ensure that all principal design work carried out by the individual as a registered principal design practitioner is indemnified under a professional indemnity policy. 

The policy must extend the indemnity to all liability of the registered individual for regulated work from when the practitioner first became registered under the design and building practitioner scheme. 

A partnership indemnity policy must extend to any registered practitioner while they were partner or employee including before when the policy started. 

Auditing of design practitioners 

Our audits of design practitioners help to build trust in the building and construction industry. 

The audit focuses on a practitioner's compliance and on their conduct as well as projects with high complexity or the potential to impact a large number of people. 

We will use complaints data and other intelligence about practitioner conduct to choose our targets for audits. 

Our audit process, risk analysis framework, audit outcomes and regulator activities after an audit are detailed in this audit strategy. 

Learn more about our strategy for auditing design practitioners.

NSW Planning Portal online training and resources 

If you would like help with using the NSW Planning Portal, online training sessions are available. 

• Resources for developers and practitioners to navigate the NSW Planning Portal