Business View Oceania | January 2020

23 24 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA JANUARY 2020 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA JANUARY 2020 HOUS ING INDUSTRY ASSOC I AT ION LTD . (HI A) housing awards program. We also host industry events like economic updates and breakfasts or luncheons with guest speakers across the year. There is always a whole suite of calendar opportunities in the event space.” BVO: What types of services do you provide? Brookfield: “The core of HIA is our Member Servicing. Our membership operates small and 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 Organisation (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 assist our members. We also have regional offices. For instance, the New South Wales region is serviced out of our Sydney office, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour and Canberra. This helps us have people within a reasonable distance of our members to provide them with services. And people who know the local lingo. An example of why that’s important would be the planning system. Our home building members are always dealing with local councils and trying to get approvals. Those rules are very state based and even local council based. So we need staff who are experts in their state and that’s who we have in the capital offices. The national building code is primarily the same across the country but we also have specialist building and technical staff in most of our offices to provide that kind of local flavour, as well as the national expertise. “In the area of networking, we run a variety of member events; ranging from get-togethers for meeting industry peers and learning information through to recognising members’ success with our