Business View Oceania - April 2024

large businesses and involves residential builders, trade contractors and related professions (building designers, building surveyors, etc.). And we have the manufacturers and suppliers of building products. In doing their business, members come to us for legal advice about contracts between them and their customers industrial relations in terms of awards, pay rates, superannuation, tax obligations and all the employment aspects, which we classify as ‘how you run your business’. “We have a team of legal staff in our offices who provide advice on the phone and everything is backed up in a digital presence. We then have a group of technical and planning staff. Members can call up and say, “I put these tiles on the floor and this happened…why? And how do I fix it?” they want to know how to get it right. Or they call because the council tells them something has to be done a certain way and they want to check with us about whether it’s the right information and how to do what’s needed. Our staff are experts in the Building Code of Australia and Australian Standards.We have qualified town planners across the country that share the load across the state borders. They provide assistance in dealing with local councils and getting planning approvals. “Under the second banner are services for offer for a fee. HIA is a Registered Training Organization (RTO) meaning we run accredited training in a small number of building qualifications, and non- accredited training in a range of other useful areas like business skills. HIA has created a number of training courses including the HIA GreenSmart environmental building training course; programs on running your business; dealing with councils and an increasing number of these are available online.We also have a fee-for service opportunity in the work health and safety space with our Safety Services team, and we have HIA Trade Pass where we help a builder to manage all the compliance paperwork for the trade contractors they use. “The third banner is advocacy.We are a membership association that seeks to work with governments (all nine of them). Governments have ideas, they are changing laws and affecting what our members do in a day-to-day sense. Whether that’s how they 14 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 06, ISSUE 04