Terms of use

About these terms

This website is run by Cornerstone Building Surveyors Pty Ltd. These terms cover the site at www.cornerstonebs.com.au and the quote request form on it. Using the site means you accept them.

How we handle personal information is a separate page: our privacy policy.

General information only

The pages here explain how building permits, inspections and sign-off work in Victoria in general terms. They are written to be useful before you commit to anything. They are not advice about your property.

Whether your job needs a building permit, and what the regulations require of it, depends on the site, the plans, the zone and the work itself. Two jobs that sound the same on paper can land in different places. So do not treat anything on this site as the answer for your project — ask us, or ask another registered building surveyor, before you order materials, sign a contract or start work.

We keep the site accurate and update it when the rules change, but regulations move and pages can fall behind.

No client relationship

Reading this website, ringing us, emailing us or sending the quote form does not engage us, and it does not appoint us as the relevant building surveyor for your project.

Under the Building Act 1993 it is the owner, or the owner's agent, who appoints the building surveyor — not the builder, and not us. Our own process is that an engagement begins when we confirm it in writing, and the appointment is then put in writing and signed before we start. Until that happens no one is acting on your project.

Quote requests

These are the terms attached to the quote form, restated here so they live in one place. The same terms sit beside the form on the quote page, which is what the tick box refers to. They say the same thing; if the wording ever drifts, this page is the current version.

• Sending a quote request is not a booking and not an engagement. The form is used only to give us enough information to assess your enquiry and prepare a quotation where that is appropriate.
• Sending the form does not oblige us to take on the work. We may decline any request at our discretion, without giving a reason.
• If we decide to go ahead, we email you to confirm the engagement and set out the next steps. No services are provided until we confirm in writing, and nothing should be ordered or started on the assumption that we are already acting.
• You are responsible for the information you send being complete and accurate. Errors and omissions can delay the job or change the quote.
• By submitting the form you confirm that the owner has not already appointed another building surveyor for the project.

Our work under the Building Act

Once an owner appoints us, what a building surveyor must do is set by the Building Act 1993, the Building Regulations 2018 and the National Construction Code. Those duties are owed under the law, and some of them are owed to the relevant council and to the Victorian Building Authority rather than to the owner.

These terms do not change any of that. Nothing on this website limits, waives or varies a building surveyor's functions under the Building Act, and nothing here can be read as an agreement to do so.

Using this website

Sensible things, put plainly. Please do not:

• interfere with the site, or try to reach parts of it that are not meant to be public;
• send false details through the quote form, or someone else's details without their agreement;
• upload a file containing malicious code. Uploaded files are not scanned for viruses, so we take this one seriously;
• use the site or anything on it to do something against the law.

Copyright

The words, illustrations, logo and page design on this site are ours, or licensed to us. Read them, print them, quote a line, send someone a link — that is what they are for. Republishing pages, or using them commercially, needs our permission first.

The Building Act 1993, the Building Regulations 2018 and the National Construction Code belong to others. Where we describe them we are describing them, not republishing them, and the official text always wins over our summary of it.

Links to other sites

We link to councils, the Victorian Building Authority and the legislation because it saves you looking them up. Those sites are not under our control, we do not check them, and a link is not an endorsement. Once you leave this site you are on someone else's terms.

Availability

We keep the site up and working, but we cannot promise it will always be available or always free of errors, and we may change or remove pages at any time. This does not affect your rights below.

Your rights and our liability

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law — among them that services are supplied with due care and skill, and within a reasonable time. If we fall short of one of those, you have rights, and nothing on this page is meant to suggest otherwise.

Where the Australian Consumer Law allows a supplier to limit its liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee, our liability for services is limited to supplying those services again, or paying the cost of having them supplied again.

Separately from that: no engagement exists, and no services are supplied, until we confirm an engagement in writing. If you act before that confirmation — ordering a kit, booking a slab pour, setting a start date — you are doing it on your own account, because we are not yet acting on the project.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. The courts of Victoria have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute about them.

Changes to these terms

We update this page when what we do changes. A change takes effect when it is published here, and the date below tells you which version you are reading. Changes do not apply backwards: a quote we have already given you, or an engagement already confirmed in writing, runs on the terms that applied when it was given.

Version 1.0 — last updated 24 August 2026.

Contact us

Questions about these terms, or about anything on the site, go to admin@cstonebs.com or (03) 9802 9459. Our contact page has the rest, and our privacy policy covers what happens to the information you send.