Building in Bushfire-Prone Areas Victoria Victoria's bushfire building regulations operate through two overlapping systems - a planning control (the Bushfire Management Overlay) and a building control (the Bushfire Prone Area designation). A property can be subject to one, both, or neither. The two systems serve different purposes, are administered by different authorities, and trigger different...

Large areas of New South Wales are designated as bushfire-prone land, and in many parts of regional and coastal NSW the designation covers entire suburbs and rural areas. If you are planning to build a house on land that sits within this designation, the planning and construction pathway in NSW carries a set of requirements that sit on top of the national building standards - additional approvals, specific...

Reviewed by M. Zeng, M. Eng. September 2026. What AS 3959 Is and What It Is Not AS 3959:2018 is the current edition of the standard, incorporating Amendment No. 1 (2019) and Amendment No. 2 (2020). It applies to the construction of Class 1 buildings (houses) and Class 10a buildings and decks associated with a Class 1 building. It does not apply to Class 2 buildings (apartments) or larger...

A bushfire attack level assessment determines the radiant heat exposure a building site can expect during a bushfire and assigns a BAL rating from BAL-LOW through BAL-FZ. That rating dictates which construction standards apply under AS 3959, shaping everything from glazing specifications to cladding materials. Every new dwelling, major renovation and secondary dwelling on land mapped as bushfire-prone...