Cornerstone issues building permits and carries out the mandatory inspections across Melbourne’s south-east — the City of Casey, Cardinia Shire, the City of Greater Dandenong and Frankston City — for every class of building work: new homes, extensions, townhouses, sheds and garages, retaining walls, verandahs and decks, demolition, warehouses, offices, shop fit-outs and change of use. We’re on the road through the south-east most weeks, so a footings inspection in Clyde North or a final in Dandenong South is a normal day.
You get one registered building surveyor from the first look at your drawings to the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection, and a fixed fee quoted before you commit. Builders running several jobs through Casey and Cardinia get the same person on every one.
Building in the Casey–Cardinia growth corridor
Clyde, Clyde North, Officer, Pakenham and the newer edges of Cranbourne and Berwick are estate country — Berwick Waters, Smiths Lane and Orana around Clyde North, Arcadia and Timbertop in Officer, Lakeside and Cardinia Lakes in Pakenham. Most of the work is new homes on greenfield lots, and three things come up on almost every job.
Soil. The ground changes across the corridor — deep sands around Cranbourne, sand or silt over clay through Clyde North, and the most reactive clays on the low-lying ground and old swamp deposits further along — so the soil report sets the class, and the slab and footings are designed to it, not to the estate next door. We check the slab against the soil report before the permit goes out and inspect the footings before the pour.
Developer design guidelines. Nearly every estate runs its own design approval — façade, materials, fencing, sometimes the shed in the backyard. It’s separate from the building permit and we don’t issue it, but we’ll tell you what to get signed off first.
Siting. Lots are narrow and builders push walls to the boundary. Side setbacks, wall-on-boundary lengths and overlooking are where new-home permits here most often need a report and consent from council. We pick that up at assessment, not after the frame is standing.
Townhouses, units and fit-outs around Dandenong
Dandenong, Noble Park, Keysborough and Springvale are being reworked lot by lot — dual occupancies and townhouse developments on old quarter-acre blocks, usually with a planning permit in hand. We handle the building permit, the staged inspections across every unit and the occupancy permits at the end, with the planning permit in view throughout.
Dandenong South is a big industrial precinct. Warehouse fit-outs, mezzanine floors, offices inside a factory, and a change of use from storage to manufacturing or showroom all need assessment under NCC Volume One — exits, fire separation, essential safety measures, access. Tenants and shopfitters: send us the lease plan and a sketch and we’ll tell you whether it’s a permit job.
Sheds, garages and the larger Cardinia blocks
Past Pakenham the blocks get bigger — Nar Nar Goon, Tynong, Bunyip and Koo Wee Rup. Farm sheds, workshops and second garages are the common jobs. Most need a shed or garage permit: a shed on a rural lot is not exempt just because the block is big. The small-shed exemption turns on floor area and height, not lot size, and the only farm-building exemption is one the council can choose to grant for a genuine farm building on farm land — it isn’t automatic. In some zones there’s a planning question as well. We’ll check the siting before you order the slab.
What’s in demand across the south-east
New-home permit packages for builders, knock-down rebuilds in Berwick, Narre Warren and Frankston, extensions and decks on established homes, retaining walls on the sloping blocks around Frankston and Berwick, demolition permits ahead of a rebuild, and fit-outs from Dandenong through to Cranbourne. The TomCon Homes review on this page is from a builder who dealt with our surveyor directly — that’s the relationship we’re after with every builder in the corridor.
Nearby
Our Cranbourne and Dandenong pages go deeper on those two centres. We also work across the eastern suburbs, Melbourne’s north, the western suburbs and regional Victoria, including Gippsland.