Your product may already be tested, certified and selling well at home. In Australia that testing is often to the wrong standard, which does not disqualify the product but does close the simplest approval route. We map the evidence pathway your product actually needs, prepare the submission, and work alongside the accredited bodies that issue certificates.
Three problems account for most of the delay we see, and none of them are about whether the product is any good.
Evidence
European and American test reports are real evidence, and they are not thrown away. But they generally cannot carry a product down the simplest route, which changes the cost and the timeline of your approval.
Jurisdiction
The National Construction Code is given legal effect by each state and territory separately, and they adopt on different dates. A submission built for one jurisdiction can be against the wrong edition in the next one.
Liability
Queensland places a statutory duty on anyone who designs, manufactures, imports or supplies a building product, and applies it outside Queensland to the full extent of its power. Being based overseas does not put you outside it.
We are not a certification body and we do not issue certificates. We do the work that gets a submission to the point where a certifier can say yes.
Which forms of evidence of suitability are open to your product, what each one costs in time and money, and which one is realistic given the test data you already hold.
A standard binds in the edition the Code lists, not the latest one published. We identify exactly which tests you are missing, and which of your existing reports still count.
We compile the dossier, write the technical statements, manage the application and liaise with the accredited certification body through assessment and any request for further information.
They have run separate certification schemes since 2017, and the legal weight of a certificate is genuinely different on each side of the Tasman. Assuming one covers the other is a common and expensive mistake.
This is the level at which compliance is actually won or lost. If your current advisor has not raised these with you, that is worth noticing.
The National Construction Code offers two ways to show a product meets a Performance Requirement: a Deemed-to-Satisfy Solution, which follows a prescribed recipe, or a Performance Solution, which demonstrates the outcome by other means. Both still require evidence of suitability.
The Queensland Building and Construction Commission, on imported productsTesting undertaken outside of Australia is often undertaken in accordance with Standards other than NCC referenced Australian Standards, such as European or American Standards. This does not eliminate such testing; however, a Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway would no longer be available and a Performance Solution to satisfy the Performance Requirement is required.
That single distinction is the most common reason an imported product takes eighteen months instead of six. A Performance Solution is a legitimate and frequently used route, but it is a more involved piece of work, and it needs to be planned for rather than discovered halfway through.
There is a further trap in the laboratory itself. A test report only counts as coming from an Accredited Testing Laboratory if the laboratory is accredited by a body that NATA recognises through mutual recognition. A report from a competent but unaccredited lab cannot be used as that form of evidence at all.
For most building products, a certificate is one of several permitted forms of evidence. For plumbing and drainage products, it is not.
If your product is of a type listed on the WaterMark Schedule of Products, a WaterMark Licence is the only permitted form of evidence. There is no alternative route, and the practical bite is precise: it remains legal to sell an uncertified product, but a licensed plumber is not permitted to install it. A product you can lawfully import and warehouse can still be commercially dead on arrival.
If your product touches drinking water there is a live deadline attached. Since 1 May 2026 manufacturers may only produce Lead Free certified products, and from 1 May 2028 only Lead Free products may be installed in drinking water systems.
Australia and New Zealand have operated separate CodeMark schemes since 1 August 2017, and the legal weight of each is different in a way that matters commercially.
In New Zealand, a product certificate issued under section 269 of the Building Act 2004 and current on the public register must be accepted by a Building Consent Authority, provided every condition in it is met. In Australia, a CodeMark certificate is the form of evidence that state and territory building control legislation generally requires authorities to accept, but acceptance still depends on the certificate's stated scope, conditions and limitations, and on the legislation of the jurisdiction you are in.
It is also worth being clear about what a BRANZ Appraisal is and is not. BRANZ itself is explicit that the Code does not require any product to have an Appraisal, and that BRANZ does not approve products to enter the market. It is persuasive supporting evidence a consent authority may accept, which is a materially weaker position than a certificate it must.
Part 6AA of the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act places a duty on every person in a building product's chain of responsibility, including the person who imports or supplies it, to ensure so far as reasonably practicable that it is not a non-conforming product for its intended use. The Part applies both within and outside Queensland, to the full extent of the state's extraterritorial legislative power.
Why we phrase our own role carefullyThe Act states plainly that a person's duty cannot be transferred to another person, and disregards any agreement that purports to limit a duty holder's capacity to influence and control the matter. No consultant, distributor or agent can take that duty off you, and any adviser who implies otherwise is describing something the law does not allow.
What we can do is make the duty straightforward to discharge: the right evidence, assembled properly, with the required information supplied alongside the product covering its suitability for each intended use, its conditions and limitations, and its installation instructions.
We do not certify products, accredit them or approve them. Those are the functions of accredited certification bodies and the schemes that authorise them, and describing our work in those terms would misrepresent it. We prepare, compile, advise and coordinate, and we are candid when a product's pathway is going to be long or expensive rather than discovering it for you later.
We review every test report, certificate and technical document you hold, and establish which of it is usable here and which is not.
A written recommendation covering the route, the jurisdictions that matter for your target projects, the gaps to close, and a realistic cost and timeline.
We close the gaps, arrange testing where it is needed, compile the submission and manage it through assessment with the certification body.
Certificates carry surveillance obligations and expiry dates, and referenced standards change. We plan for that rather than letting it surprise you.
Evidence of suitability assessment
Every document you hold, assessed against what the Code will actually accept.
Standards gap analysis
The specific tests missing for your product, against the edition of each standard the Code references.
A written pathway recommendation
Which route, in which jurisdictions, at what cost, over what timeline, and why.
Submission dossier preparation
Compiled, written and formatted for the body assessing it, not handed to you as a checklist.
Testing coordination
Arranged with appropriately accredited laboratories, with the scope specified so the report is usable.
Product information for the supply chain
Scope of use, conditions, limitations and installation information, written to meet what suppliers are required to pass on.
Strategy & Execution
Compliance is one input into an entry decision. If you have not yet committed to Australia, start here instead.
Market Entry & ExpansionDemand
A certificate earns you the right to be specified. It does not make a specifier aware you exist.
Marketing & DemandChannel Development
Compliant and unavailable is the same outcome as non-compliant. Distribution is the other half.
Distribution NetworkBring your existing test reports and certificates to a 45-minute call. We will tell you which of them work here, which do not, and what closing the gap is likely to involve. That answer is useful to you whether or not you engage us.