Resources
The vocabulary of Australian strata, property management and trade licensing — including the places where the same thing has four different names depending on which State you are in, and the one term that means two different documents.
The legal entity made up of all the lot owners in a strata scheme, responsible for the common property. When a strata manager engages a contractor, they are usually doing so as agent for this entity rather than in their own right.
The same body is called a body corporate, strata company or community corporation elsewhere.
The same entity as an owners corporation, under the name used in Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Managers in these jurisdictions are usually called body corporate managers rather than strata managers.
The Western Australian term for the entity comprising all lot owners in a strata scheme. Using "owners corporation" to a Perth audience marks you as unfamiliar with the jurisdiction.
The South Australian term for the entity comprising all lot owners in a community or strata titled scheme.
The group of owners elected to make decisions on behalf of the owners corporation or body corporate between general meetings. Contractor engagements above certain value thresholds typically need committee approval, which is one reason strata contractor work tends to be scheduled rather than instant.
A licensed agent engaged by an owners corporation or body corporate to administer the scheme, including arranging maintenance and engaging contractors. Also called a strata managing agent, or a body corporate manager in Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
An agent who manages a tenanted residential property on behalf of an individual owner, including arranging repairs. This is a different role from a strata manager: a different principal, a different funding source, and a different liability chain — which is why the two are treated separately throughout this site.
The owner who grants a lease of a property to a tenant — the landlord. A property manager acts as agent for the lessor, and it is the lessor who ultimately approves repair spending.
A property development divided into individually owned lots plus common property, administered collectively by the owners. Also called a strata plan.
An individually owned part of a strata scheme — an apartment, townhouse, office or car space — as distinct from common property.
The parts of a scheme owned collectively by all lot owners rather than by any individual owner: typically lobbies, lifts, roofs, driveways, external walls and shared services. Most contractor work commissioned by a strata manager is work on common property, which is why an unlicensed trade there is everyone's problem rather than one owner's.
A contribution paid by lot owners to fund the running of the scheme, including maintenance and contractor works. Contractor spending commissioned by a strata manager is generally levy-funded — other people's money, spent under a delegated authority, which is precisely why the standard applied to it is higher than for private spending.
The authorisation a person or business must hold to carry out particular trade work. Licensing is State and Territory based, so the issuing authority, the licence categories, and the scope of work each covers all differ across Australia. A trade licensed in one State is not automatically licensed in another.
The category of a licence, which determines what work the holder may lawfully perform and in some jurisdictions the value of work they may contract for. This is the failure mode people miss: a current licence of the wrong class is not the same as being licensed for the job in front of you.
The official record maintained by a licensing authority of who holds a licence, its class, and its current status. The register is the authoritative source for whether a licence is current.
Compare verification.
The ongoing form of contractor compliance: not a single check before an engagement, but maintaining a current picture across every contractor a firm uses — collecting the documents, re-checking them as they expire, and keeping the record of each check. The work is continuous because licences and policies expire on their own schedule, not on the firm's.
See how it works.
Assessing a contractor against a buyer's own criteria before they are eligible to be engaged — typically safety systems, method statements, training records and past incidents, alongside licence and insurance. It is common in construction, mining and facilities contracting. It is a broader exercise than verifying that a licence and a policy are current, and TradeVerify does not perform it.
A document prepared for high-risk construction work setting out the hazards involved and the control measures in place. It is a work health and safety document, prepared by the contractor for the job, and it says nothing about whether their licence or insurance is current. TradeVerify does not collect, review or store them.
Compare work health and safety.
A document issued by an insurer confirming that a policy is in force, and stating the insured, the cover and the period it runs for. In contractor compliance it means the contractor's own policy — most commonly public liability.
Watch the ambiguity. Used without qualification, "certificate of currency" in a strata context usually refers to the scheme's own building insurance — a different document, held by a different party, for a different purpose. If you mean the contractor's cover, say "contractor certificate of currency".
Cover for a business's liability for injury to people or damage to property caused by its operations. This is typically the cover a managing firm asks an on-site trade to hold.
Cover for liability arising from professional advice or services rather than physical work. Typically asked of consultants — engineers, surveyors, building consultants — rather than of on-site trades. Some businesses need both, because they do both.
Cover for injury to a business's own workers. It is administered separately in each State and Territory, with different schemes, different insurers and different rules, so whether a particular contractor must hold it depends on their business structure and on where the work is done.
A business structure in which an individual trades in their own right rather than through a company. It is the structure that most often raises the workers compensation question, because a sole trader with no employees is treated differently from one who engages workers.
Australian Business Number — the identifier issued to a business for its dealings with government and other businesses. Worth being clear about: an ABN identifies a business. It is not a licence, and it says nothing at all about whether the holder is qualified to perform trade work.
The party with overall responsibility for a construction project or site, including coordinating safety across the contractors working on it. Whether a managing agent takes on this role for a particular job changes what duties attach to it, and is worth confirming before larger works start.
The process of confirming, before and during an engagement, that a contractor holds the licence and insurance the engaging firm requires — and keeping a record that it was confirmed.
Confirming a fact against its source. For a licence, that means asking the register that issued it. For insurance, there is no register to ask — so the source is the certificate itself, checked against the insured entity, the cover held and the period it runs for.
A retained, timestamped record of each check performed — what was checked, when, and where the answer came from. Its purpose is evidentiary: it lets a firm demonstrate what it knew and when it knew it, which is the question actually asked after something goes wrong.
The obligation to take reasonable care to avoid foreseeable harm to others. For a managing agent engaging contractors, it is the general principle underlying the expectation that contractors are checked before they are sent to a property.
A lapsed licence or policy has passed its expiry date and is no longer in force. An expiring one is approaching expiry and is still current. They are kept as separate statuses because they require different responses — one is a reminder, the other is a stop.
Repairs to a tenanted property that must be attended to quickly — a burst pipe, a failed hot water service, a security risk. What qualifies as urgent, and how fast a landlord or agent must act, is set by residential tenancy law and differs by State and Territory. This is the situation in which contractor verification most often gets skipped, because there is no time to chase a certificate.
The safety regime adopted in most Australian jurisdictions under nationally modelled laws, built around the concepts of a person conducting a business or undertaking and of workers.
Victoria is the exception. Victoria did not adopt the model laws and retains its own occupational health and safety regime, which speaks of employers and employees rather than PCBUs and workers. Victorian obligations and vocabulary differ, and treating the two as synonyms is a common and visible mistake.
Person conducting a business or undertaking — the party on whom primary safety duties fall under the model work health and safety laws. The term is not used in Victoria, which retains employer and employee.
Tell us and we will add it. If you were looking for how the process works rather than what the words mean, start there instead.