NIHG Assessment Tool
Aim
To produce an assessment tool to be used by a skilled designer/architect to check a set of house plans and specifications against the requirements of the National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) to improve compliance, for new and upgraded houses, with the priorities and targets of the Guide.
Background
This was developed to assist the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing assess design documents against the National Indigenous Housing Guide. The Checklist provided questions that assessed the ‘ensure’, or essential, items within all sections of the NIHG.
The checklist then produced reports for designers on items compliant with, not compliant with the NIHG. It also produced a list of details missing from the documents, needed to comply with the NIHG.
The Checklist
- was used repeatedly to assess documents in the NT SIHIP program
- took 4-5 hours to implement on each set of documents
- developed rapidly through the use with real projects
- included a pre assessment checklist for design teams to prepare for the assessment
- was requested and forwarded to other state housing agencies for their own use (this was a result of presentations at the Stakeholder Meetings).
Outcomes
- The Checklist showed that many new and upgrade projects did not comply with the items presented in the NIHG.
- Better designers used the Checklist process enthusiastically to check their design work, whilst poorer more ill informed design teams thought the checklist was an additional bureaucratic burden.
- A proposal, requested by FaHCSIA, to make an online version of the Checklist was prepared and presented, but no action was taken. IF YOU THINK AN ON LINE VERSION IS USEFUL CONTACT US
- No action was ever taken to follow up on the details of design assessments showing significant lack of compliance to the NIHG.
Location of project : all locations are applicable, but skilled assessment is critical when using the Checklist