Plumbline Certification Building surveyors · Osborne Park (08) 9000 0422 Send your drawings

Certification · Perth metro

The certificate your permit is waiting on — the fee and the working days, before you ring.

Three registered building surveyors in Osborne Park, certifying residential work right across the metro.

2,400 certificates issued in 9 years, and no permit refused for our paperwork.

Reg. BS‑0000 · ABN 00 000 000 422 · residential work only · Joondalup to Rockingham.

  • The fee is fixed before we open the drawings, and it is the fee on the invoice.
  • We read your set for nothing first and tell you what is missing while it is still cheap to fix.
  • One surveyor owns your job end to end — the same person on the phone, on site and on the certificate.
“Ask any certifier what it costs and you will get ‘it depends’.” It depends on four things: what the work is, whether you want us on site during the build, how fast you need it back, and whether the drawings are actually compliant. Three of them are on this page. The fourth we will tell you for nothing, before you pay us anything.
$0 — we read the drawings before you owe us anything

Send whatever you have. You get back a list of what is missing and a fixed fee for the certification, usually the same afternoon. Most sets are missing something at this point, and the cheapest day to find that out is today.

Send the set

Our fee and our turnaround

Pick the work. Read the fee and the working days.

Addition or alteration · certificate + site inspectionsStandard turnaround

$1,200 6working days
Plumbline’s professional fee, fixed in writing. Ex GST. Working days counted from the day a complete set lands with us. Send this set in for a fixed fee
Stylised drawing sheet for the selected workA drawing sheet with a stylised plan of the selected work, a title block carrying the work type, the scope and the fee, and an approval stamp carrying the turnaround in working days.
A stylised sheet, not a real one. It carries no dimensions, no scale, no clause references and nothing that could be lodged with anybody.

Three of the things we look at first on this job

    1. 01 · Done by others

      Your drawings

      Your designer, your builder, or you. We start when they land.

    2. 02 · This is our part

      Our certificate — $1,200

      Back with you in 6 working days. This is the only figure on this page we set.

    3. 03 · Set by others

      Your building permit

      The permit authority’s fee and the state levies. Charged at cost. Not printed here.

    Why there is no total on this page. Getting a building permit costs more than our fee. There is the permit application fee your permit authority charges, and there are levies the state adds to a building permit. Neither is set by us, neither goes in our pocket, and both change. We pass them through at cost and we will not print a figure for either one here — a number we invented would be worse than no number. Ring us and we will read your permit authority’s current schedule with you, line by line, before you commit to anything.

    What is the work?

    What do you want from us?

    How fast?

    What you get for that fee

      What we certify and what we charge

      Four kinds of work, four fees, and two lines that are not ours.

      Every fee below is our own professional fee for a normal job of that kind, and every turnaround is our own. If your job is not a normal one we say so in writing before we start, not on the invoice.

      • Pool and barrier certificate

        $340 · 3 working days

        The pool, the barrier around it and the gates checked against the plans, and the certificate written.

      • Patio, carport or shed

        $420 · 4 working days

        A kit or a custom structure. The engineering, the footings and the siting checked, then certified.

      • Addition or alteration

        $780 · 6 working days

        The job we do most. Extensions, alfrescos, garage conversions and second storeys over an existing house.

      • New single dwelling

        $1,150 · 8 working days

        A whole house from the ground up, certified as one set: the structure, the fire separation, the wet areas, the energy report.

      • Site inspections during the build

        From $140 · added to any certificate

        We come out at the stages that matter and write up what we saw. Adding them never delays the certificate.

      • Priority turnaround

        +35% · halves the working days

        Your job goes to the front of our queue. It buys days, not corners — the checking is identical.

      • We read your drawings first

        $0 · before you pay anything

        Send the set and we will tell you what is missing and what it will cost to certify. No fee, no obligation.

      • Permit fee and state levies

        At cost · not ours to set

        Charged straight through with the receipt attached. We will not print a figure for either one on a web page.

      Two things worth knowing before you pick. Adding site inspections never slows the certificate down — it is the same document, out on the same day, because the inspections happen against your builder’s programme and not against our desk. And if your builder has not got a slab date yet, take standard. Priority costs 35 per cent more to buy days you are not going to use.

      How it runs

      Four steps, and you know the fee at step one.

      Most people reach us on the day somebody — a builder, a designer, a council counter — said the words “you need a certificate before we can issue the permit”. That is a bad afternoon to be told to send the plans and wait for a quote.

      1. 01

        Send the set

        Email the drawings, the specification and whatever reports you already have. A partial set is fine — we would rather see it early than perfect.

      2. 02

        We read it for nothing

        You get a list of what is missing and a fixed fee for the certification, usually the same day. Nothing is payable to find that out.

      3. 03

        We check and certify

        One surveyor works the whole set, comes back once with anything that has to change, then issues the certificate.

      4. 04

        You lodge for the permit

        The certificate goes to you with everything the permit authority asks to see attached. You or your builder lodge it — and we will sit on the phone while you do it.

      What people say

      Three of the people who send us drawings.

      “I am an owner-builder and I had no idea what a certificate was supposed to cost. Plumbline told me the number on the phone in about a minute, then read my drawings for free and found two things my designer had left out.”
      Nadia R.Owner-builder, Bayswater · addition and alfresco
      “We do eight or nine houses a year and the fee is the fee. No variation letters, no surprise inspection charges at the end. My contract administrator has stopped checking their invoices.”
      Cameron T.Registered builder, Canning Vale · new dwellings
      “The pool went in before Christmas and the barrier was the thing holding everything up. They came out, listed the four items that were wrong, and certified it two days after the fencer fixed them.”
      Steph W.Homeowner, Melville · pool and barrier

      These reviews are demonstration copy written for this page. They are not real customers, and they are deliberately not marked up as structured review data.

      Where we work

      Osborne Park out, right across the metro.

      We are ten minutes off the Mitchell, so most of the metro is a morning for an inspection. Anything past Yanchep or Mandurah we still take — we just put the travel in the fee proposal and tell you before you agree to it.

      Stylised map of the Perth metropolitan area showing where Plumbline Certification works

      Regular ground

      • Osborne Park
      • Stirling
      • Balcatta
      • Bayswater
      • Morley
      • Joondalup
      • Wanneroo
      • Midland
      • Swan Valley
      • Perth & Northbridge
      • Subiaco
      • Melville
      • Applecross
      • Canning Vale
      • Cannington
      • Cockburn
      • Fremantle
      • Rockingham

      The map is drawn, not surveyed. It shows roughly where we go, not where any boundary sits — and which permit authority your job falls under is a question for your address, not for a map on a web page.

      Asked every week

      Answered plainly, including the ones we will not answer.

      If what you need is not here, ring the office. Nobody will book you in for something you do not need.

      What do I actually send you?

      The site plan, the floor plans and elevations, the specification, and any consultant reports you already have — engineering, energy, a soil report. If you have a builder or a designer, give us their email and we will deal with them directly instead of relaying through you. Send what you have, not what you think we want. Reading it and telling you what is missing costs nothing.

      What happens if the drawings are not compliant?

      We mark up exactly what has to change and send it back to whoever drew it, in one list rather than in a fortnight of emails. Once the corrected sheets come back, the clock on your working days starts again from the complete set.

      The fee does not move for one round of corrections inside the same scope. If the job changes shape — another storey, another building — you get a new fee in writing before we touch it.

      Do you inspect during the build?

      Only if you ask us to. That is the second control on the estimate above: certificate + site inspections. We attend at the stages that matter for your kind of work and write up what we saw each time. It is priced from $140 on the smallest jobs and it is added to the certificate fee, not billed separately as it goes.

      Adding inspections does not slow the certificate down. They run against your builder’s programme, weeks after the document has already gone out.

      Who lodges it with the council?

      You or your builder. The certificate is issued to you with everything your permit authority asks to see attached, and the application itself is yours to lodge — that is where the permit fee and the state levies get paid, to them, not to us. If you would rather we walked you through the form, ring us and we will do it on the phone at no charge.

      Can you certify work that has already started?

      Ring us before you assume the answer either way. What is possible depends on what has been built, what can still be opened up and inspected, and what your permit authority will accept — and that last part is genuinely their call, not ours. We will not pretend on a web page that there is a standard answer to this. What we can promise is a straight one on the phone, for nothing, in the first five minutes.

      What does priority actually change?

      Your set goes to the front of the queue and the turnaround halves — that is all it buys. The checking is identical, the certificate is identical, and it costs 35 per cent more. If your builder has not got a slab date, take standard. On an addition that is six working days against three, and the certificate will still be sitting there long before anyone needs it.

      Why does this page not show what the permit costs in total?

      Because the total is not ours. Our fee is the figure in the card above and we will hold it. The permit application fee is set by your permit authority and the levies are set by the state; both are charged through at cost with the receipt attached, and both move. Any figure we printed here would be a guess with our name on it, so we do not print one. Ring us with your address and we will read the current schedule with you.

      Send your drawings

      Tell us the job. We’ll send a fee and a date.

      This is the quickest way to reach us. Anything in before 3pm on a working day gets read the same afternoon; later than that, first thing the next morning.

      Rather talk it through? Ring (08) 9000 0422 — one of the three surveyors answers, not a call centre.

      You do not need the right words for it. “My builder says I need a certificate and I do not know what that is” is a perfectly good enquiry, and it is the one we get most.
      A deadline, a council you have already spoken to, or the thing that is worrying you.

      We use this to read your job and write you a fee. This is a demonstration page, so nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.

      This is a demonstration build by Sapience Analytics. Want one pointed at your customers?

      Plumbline is not a real practice — the page is. What makes it work is not the drawing: it is that an owner-builder who has just been told they need a certificate can read a fee and a turnaround in eight seconds, and can see exactly which charges are ours and which are not. Almost nobody in this trade will do that, and that is the whole opportunity. We would build yours the same way.