Assignment Task

Rationale

As a construction professional, you will be working in a context where the Planning and Design Code or similar assessment tools are essential to guide development submissions and the design and operations of construction projects. Although you may not be required to directly contribute to the creation of planning assessment documents and tools, a familiarity with the general structure and how to read and interpret them will be essential for your professional life. This assignment helps you to build the skills in reading and interpreting the Planning and Design Code. The Planning and Design Code actually applies directly to specific contexts and potential projects, so this assessment uses a scenario-based design to make the application of your knowledge relevant to the real world.

Objectives

1. Relate the principles of development and control to various projects and localities.

2. Critically review the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act and Regulations, and the related Australian standards.

3. Relate the Building Code of Australia to projects of all kinds using drawings and other information.

4. Compose reports on building and planning matters and analyze non-compliance with regulations.

Part

A.  Regulation And Strategic Analysis

The first part of the assessment requires you to explore the broad context of the regulatory environment and the strategic plans that encompass the area.

The first thing that you are asked to do is provide a report on why it is important to plan and regulate development and what the consequences of unregulated development could be. You are to provide a brief rundown of what the key statutory components are that are used to regulate development and what each statutory component’s role is and why. You also need to investigate the role of the Council in the development assessment process.

The state government has a strategic plan called the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide 2017 Update (Government of South Australia, n.d.), and the strategic plan for the City of West Torrens is called the City of West Torrens Community Plan 2030 (City of West Torrens, 2021). Discuss some of the key points in the 2 strategic plans that relate to development and the promoting of development in the area, and the process that the State Government and the City of West Torrens would have used in developing those strategic plans.

It is also important that you demonstrate an understanding of how the visions from the state and local strategic plans feed into the Planning and Design Code, and how the Planning and Design Code uses these strategic plans to guide development in the area.

B.  Development Plan Analysis And Response

Your new supervisor wants you to understand the process in interpreting the Planning and Design Code and assessing a development that the planner would do and how it is a great benefit for us as the developers to do before going to the council with a development application. This can save us time and money by submitting an application that ticks all the boxes of the Planning and Design Code.

• The first thing that you need to do is download a copy of the Guide to the Phase Three (Urban Areas) Planning and Design Code (PlanSA 2021), and access the Planning and Design Code.
• You then need to find the correct zone on the Planning and Design Code website that relates to the site and then determine what type of building that we could build on this site that meets the requirements of the Planning and Design Code in regard to the zone outcome, and what is envisaged for the zone. You need to address how your proposal will meet the zone outcomes and what is envisaged for the site. The block of land that you are proposing to develop large but is not a regular shaped piece of land. Think carefully regarding the options that will allow you to utilise the maximum amount of land to make the biggest return on your investment yet still meet the deemed-to-satisfy criteria (DTS) of the Planning and Design Code.
• Once you have a proposal briefly discuss it and how it meets all the DTS provisions of that zone and the relevant overlays in the Planning and Design Code. You then need to apply the steps of the development process to the proposal