Strata · Lot Works Review
Independent reports for owners corporations, strata committees and managing agents.
Since July 2025, a strata committee that does not refuse a minor renovation in writing within three months has approved it. We assess what a proposal will do to the building and what approvals it needs, and report to the owners corporation. Five business days.
How the review sits alongside your existing process, what it does for your exposure on the three-month clock, and how a scheme adopts it. Costs the scheme nothing.
What committee members are now personally responsible for, what the assessment covers, and how it protects the decision you have to make. No cost to the scheme.
For a lot owner, or an architect or builder acting for one, directed here by their managing agent. Commence the independent review report to be submitted with a renovation application, as stipulated by the committee or the scheme's by-laws.
What each level of assessment covers, side by side, and what it costs. Four levels — from a 48-hour desk review to a coordinated review with engineering and legal input.
Spicer Architecture has spent twenty years working in Class 2 buildings — apartment renovations, heritage conversions and remedial work across Sydney’s older stock. We know what a moved wet area does to the slab below, because we have detailed it, documented it and built it.
What will these works do to the building?
The physical consequence — structure, water, sound, services, fire, and the lots above and below.
What else do these works need before they can proceed?
The approval pathway — the statutory category, the consents, the certificates, the consultants and the by-law.
A committee usually gets an answer to neither. Both are set out below.
What the works will actually do to the fabric, and to the people living above and below.
Everything the works will need before they can lawfully proceed — most of which never appears in the application.
Work can be a minor renovation in statutory terms — decided by the committee on an ordinary resolution — and still put a new wet area over someone’s bedroom, load a riser that is already at capacity, or breach a fire separation. It can equally look alarming on a drawing and turn out to be cosmetic work needing no approval at all.
The statutory category tells the committee how to decide. It says nothing about what it is deciding. We report on both, separately and plainly, so the committee can see where a technically minor application carries a consequence worth conditioning — and where an alarming-looking one does not.
Our reports set out findings, risks and recommended conditions so the committee can make its decision on the record. Where a matter is legal rather than architectural, we say so and refer it to the scheme’s solicitor.
Spicer Architecture — Nominated Architect Jonathan Spicer. Registered Architect: NSW 8851 · ACT 2959 · Victoria VIC00291.
Registered Design Practitioner (Architectural) and Registered Principal Design Practitioner under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (NSW).
Office +61 2 8365 2489 · Mobile +61 404 139 557
Information on these pages about the strata legislative framework is general information only and is not legal advice. Jonathan Spicer is trained in expert witness practice in construction and architecture, and provides assessments, recommendations and reporting within that field. He is also a Juris Doctor candidate, with completion expected in 2027, and is not an Australian legal practitioner. Spicer Architecture does not provide legal services — where a matter requires them, we identify it and refer it on. Questions about a particular scheme, by-law or application should be directed to a qualified legal practitioner.