Background
The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) must not grant a license if a person is an excluded individual for a relevant event. An individual becomes excluded if they are a director, secretary or influential person for a construction company, within one year immediately before a ‘relevant company event’.
In 2014 and 2015 the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 (Qld) (QBCC Act) was amended
to, inter alia:
- reduce the exclusion period from 5 years to 3 years;
- remove the ability of an ‘excluded individual’ to apply to be categorised as a ‘permitted individual’;
- limit the application of section 56AC to a ‘construction company’; and
- deem a series of relevant (insolvency) events to be one relevant event if they all flowed from the one set of circumstances.
Under the amended section 56AC of the QBCC Act, a ‘construction company’ is a ‘company that directly or indirectly
carries out building work or building work services’. This definition does not provide the time frame in which a company
must have concluded operating as a ‘construction company’ prior to the insolvency event.
The amendment to alter the definition from ‘company’ to ‘construction company’ was made to prevent a person from
becoming excluded if the insolvency event occurred in a company unrelated to the construction industry, such as
being a director of a hairdressing business.
