How do I check out a builder in Victoria before I work for them?
Search the company and the nominee director's name in the Victorian building regulator's practitioner search at bpc.vic.gov.au. Registration in Victoria attaches to people as well as companies, so check the director named on your contract too. Confirm the registration is current, the category covers the work, and read the disciplinary history. Then run the company name through ASIC's published notices, the Federal Court's Federal Law Search and AustLII.
Step one: the practitioner search
Confirm the legal entity on ABN Lookup first, then open the regulator's find-and-check-a-practitioner search. Search the company, then search the director or nominee named on the contract, because in Victoria the registration that matters may sit with the person. You want current registration in a category that covers the work, and you want to read the disciplinary history rather than skim it.
Steps two to four: ASIC, the Federal Court, judgments
ASIC's published notices show winding-up applications and the appointment of administrators or liquidators. Search the builder and any sister companies with the same directors; a brand that has already shed one company is a brand whose next company deserves a closer look.
Many winding-up applications are filed in the Federal Court rather than the Supreme Court, so search the Commonwealth Courts Portal as well. On AustLII, search the name in quotes and skim anything from the last five years: payment disputes with subcontractors, challenges to adjudication determinations, and findings about the builder's contract administration.
Victoria's security of payment regime changed on 15 April 2026: the old restrictions on adjudicating damages, time-related costs and disputed variations are abolished for claims served from that date. That matters for the check because a builder's schedule reasons now get tested on more of the claim, and it matters for you because the subcontract's own notice clauses are now the main thing standing between a variation and payment.
Builder Check does the entity match and the register searches for you and emails the result, free. review.theconstructioncontracts.co/builder-check
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Is the regulator's search the VBA?
The Victorian Building Authority's functions moved to the Building and Plumbing Commission. The practitioner search is at bpc.vic.gov.au, and the list of authorised nominating authorities for adjudication is published through the same body.
Does Victoria publish adjudication decisions by builder name?
No searchable register in the Queensland sense. Adjudication runs through private authorised nominating authorities, so the public trail is the courts and AustLII.
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General information for Australian subcontractors, not legal advice. Statutory deadlines and details vary by state and change over time; verify them before relying on them. Written by Mat Kennedy at The Construction Contracts Co.