In New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland the statutory warranty is not simply that the work will be good. It is that the work will match what the contract described.
Most residential builders think of the scope of works as an administrative document. Something the estimator assembles, the client skims and the file swallows.
The statutes take a different view. In New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, the warranty a builder gives is not just that the work will be done properly. It is that the work will be done in accordance with the plans and specifications in the contract. The scope document is not describing the obligation. In law it substantially is the obligation.
The phrase that does the work
Section 18B(1)(a) of the Home Building Act 1989 in New South Wales implies into every contract for residential building work a warranty that the work will be done with due care and skill and in accordance with the plans and specifications set out in the contract.
Section 8(a) of the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 in Victoria uses almost the same construction, warranting that the work will be carried out in a proper and workmanlike manner and in accordance with the plans and specifications set out in the contract.
Two limbs, joined. Quality of workmanship on one side, conformity with the document on the other, and a builder can satisfy one while breaching the other. None of it can be contracted out of, which is the point that separates a statutory warranty from what a building contract has to contain as a matter of drafting.
Queensland reaches a similar place by a different route, and the difference is worth noting rather than smoothing over. The statutory warranties sit in Schedule 1B of the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991. Warranties that the work will be carried out in accordance with all relevant laws, and in an appropriate and skilful way with reasonable care and skill, attach to regulated contracts generally. The plans and specifications warranty is expressed to apply where plans and specifications form part of the contract.
That conditionality has a consequence. A thin scope in Queensland does not reduce what a builder owes. It removes the document a builder would otherwise point to.
Scope of works and plans and specifications
A scope of works is the written description of what a builder has contracted to do on a particular job, including inclusions, exclusions, allowances, standards and the extent of the work. Australian residential building statutes generally use the phrase plans and specifications rather than scope of works. In New South Wales and Victoria a statutory warranty requires the work to be carried out in accordance with the plans and specifications set out in the contract, and that warranty cannot be excluded or modified by the contract. In Queensland the equivalent warranty applies where plans and specifications form part of the contract.
Three jobs the document is doing at once
The first is the one just described. The scope sets the standard the work is measured against when someone alleges a breach.
The second is definitional in a different direction. A variation is a departure from the contracted work, so the scope is what determines whether a given instruction is a variation at all. A change only exists relative to a baseline.
Where the baseline is vague, the boundary is vague, and the question of whether anything outside it becomes a variation stops being a matter of documentation and becomes a matter of argument.
That argument now carries different weight in different places. Victoria has moved to the position that undocumented variations carry criminal exposure in Victoria, which changes the character of a loose scope from a commercial risk to a regulatory one.
The third job is payment. Progress claims are made against contracted work, so what the scope says the work is has a direct bearing on what can be claimed and when.
The scope document is not describing the obligation. In law it substantially is the obligation.
Building exactly to a deficient specification
The warranties do not operate in isolation from each other, and this is where the intuition that a scope is protective starts to break down.
Alongside the plans and specifications warranty sits a separate one. Section 18B(1)(c) in New South Wales warrants that the work will be done in accordance with, and will comply with, that or any other law. Section 8(c) in Victoria warrants compliance with all laws and legal requirements, naming the Building Act 1993 expressly. Queensland carries an equivalent warranty as to relevant laws and legal requirements.
Those warranties run in parallel. Work built precisely to a specification that does not meet the National Construction Code satisfies one and breaches the other, and the contract document is not a defence to the second. This is a different thing from where licensing and compliance duties sit as a matter of registration, and it operates on every job regardless of how carefully the scope was drawn.
Both jurisdictions also carry a fitness for occupation warranty that attaches to the completed dwelling rather than to the document. A scope compliant, code compliant house that is not reasonably fit for occupation still engages it.
Silence is not exclusion
A recurring feature of scope disputes is not what the document said but what it did not.
An item omitted from a scope is not thereby excluded from the contract. It is simply undescribed, and the question of whether it formed part of the contracted work falls to be resolved by other means, including the surrounding documents, the conduct of the parties and the ordinary expectations attaching to work of that kind. A general principle of contractual interpretation is that ambiguity is construed against the party that drafted the document, which in residential building is usually not the client.
Exclusions operate differently from omissions because they are stated. That distinction is doing more work than most scope documents acknowledge, and it sits underneath a good deal of what inspectors are finding on residential jobs when a completed build is examined against its own paperwork.
The document outlives the client
Statutory warranties are not confined to the person who signed.
Section 9 of the Victorian Act gives a subsequent owner rights equal to those of the original owner, as if that subsequent owner were a party to the contract. New South Wales operates comparably in respect of successors in title. The practical effect is that a scope of works can be read as the measure of a builder’s obligation by someone the builder has never met, at the point where how a defect becomes a dispute is already well advanced.
The document is also read outside disputes entirely. Insurers, lenders and purchasers’ conveyancers examine build documentation as a matter of course, and the scope is part of what they see.
That extended readership is one reason recent changes to warranty exposure have practical consequences that reach well beyond the duration of a single contract.
How the document reads years later
A scope of works is written at the most optimistic moment of a project and read, if it is ever read closely, at the least.
By the time anyone examines it forensically the site has been landscaped, the trades have dispersed, the supervisor has changed jobs and the recollection of what was agreed on a Tuesday in the display suite has diverged between the parties. What remains is the document. That gap between the moment of drafting and the moment of scrutiny is the same gap that produces most of the risk that begins after the contract is signed.
None of which prescribes how any particular scope should be written. What the provisions establish is narrower and harder to argue with. In the three jurisdictions examined here, the description of the work in the contract is the standard against which the work is legally measured, it cannot be contracted out of, it determines what counts as a change, and it can be enforced by people who were never party to it.
THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE
There is a common instinct that the contract is the legal document and the scope is the technical annexure attached to it. The statutes do not read it that way. The warranty language points directly at the plans and specifications, which means the annexure is where the obligation actually lives. Worth sitting with the implication rather than acting on it. A builder who writes a thin scope has not limited an obligation, because the obligation is set by statute and cannot be shrunk by silence. What a thin scope removes is the evidence of what was agreed, and it removes it from the only party who would ever have needed it.
Frequently asked questions
It is the written description of the work a builder has contracted to perform on a particular job, covering inclusions, exclusions, allowances, standards and the extent of the work. Australian residential building statutes generally use the phrase plans and specifications rather than scope of works, and attach statutory warranties to that description.
It has direct legal effect. In New South Wales, section 18B(1)(a) of the Home Building Act 1989 implies a warranty that work will be done with due care and skill and in accordance with the plans and specifications set out in the contract. Victoria uses near identical language at section 8(a) of the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995. In Queensland the equivalent warranty under Schedule 1B of the QBCC Act applies where plans and specifications form part of the contract.
No. In each of the three jurisdictions examined, the statutory warranties are implied into the contract and cannot be contracted out of or modified. A contractual term purporting to limit them does not displace them for domestic building work.
Not necessarily, because more than one warranty applies at the same time. A separate warranty requires the work to comply with the law, expressed at section 18B(1)(c) in New South Wales and section 8(c) in Victoria, with an equivalent in Queensland. Work built precisely to a specification that does not meet the National Construction Code can satisfy the plans and specifications warranty while breaching the compliance warranty. A separate fitness for occupation warranty attaches to the completed dwelling.
Yes, in the jurisdictions examined. Section 9 of the Victorian Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 gives a subsequent owner rights equal to those of the original owner as if that owner were a party to the contract, and New South Wales operates comparably for successors in title. The description of the work can therefore be relied on by a later owner the builder never dealt with.
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Sources: Home Building Act 1989 (NSW) section 18B; Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995 (Vic) sections 8 and 9; Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 Schedule 1B. This article covers New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland only.
Last updated 2 September 2026. This article will be reviewed on commencement of the Victorian domestic building contract amendments and on any change to the statutory warranty provisions in the jurisdictions covered.
General information only. This article describes statutory provisions in three Australian jurisdictions and is not legal advice. It does not take account of any particular contract, project or circumstance, and provisions differ between states and territories and change over time. The Good Builder recommends obtaining advice from a qualified legal practitioner in the relevant jurisdiction before acting on anything set out here.
Author: TGB Editorial
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