The NSW Owner Builder Course

To get an owner builder permit in NSW you need to

• complete a Dept Fair Trading approved Owner Builder course and exam
• take the certificate of completion to the Department of Fair Trading who then issued me with and Owner Builder Permit
• take the permit to council who, after the DA approval process, issued my Construction Certificate

You can do a day-long course at various places but I chose to do my online through Buildsafe. It went like this

• Paid $95 online (via Paypal)
• Downloaded course notes from their website to print out and go through
• Logged in a few days later and took the exam online

There were two main parts to the course. The first half went through all the legal – insurances, contracts, permits – part of the job and the rest was more about the building process – tips on dealing with tradespeople, checking for quality control and the like.