Reading your DA conditions:
a homeowner's checklist.

A notice of determination is not written for homeowners. It's written to be legally precise, which is a different goal from being useful. So most people read it once, feel vaguely alarmed, and file it — which is how a condition requiring a report with a six-week lead time gets discovered in week five.

You can fix that in an afternoon. Here's the method we use on every project before we do anything else.

Step one: three columns

Take every condition and put it in exactly one of these:

• Before CC — must be satisfied before a Construction Certificate can be issued
• During construction — must be complied with while building
• Before OC — must be satisfied before an Occupation Certificate can be issued

Most consents signal this in the condition headings, but not all of them, and the wording is inconsistent. Look for the trigger phrases: prior to the issue of any Construction Certificate, during construction, prior to the issue of an Occupation Certificate. When a condition doesn't say, put it in the earlier column — being early costs nothing.

Step two: mark who has to do it

Beside each condition, write a name. Not a role — a name. Your engineer. Your architect. A surveyor you haven't engaged yet. Council. You.

The conditions where you can't write a name are your risk list. Those are the ones that sit still for months, because nobody has been asked.

Step three: estimate lead times, honestly

Next to each name, write how long that item realistically takes. Not how long the work takes — how long from asking to receiving. An arborist report isn't a two-day job when the arborist is booked out three weeks. Add the queue, not just the task.

Now sort the "before CC" column by lead time, longest first. That's your critical path, and it's usually not what you assumed.

Step four: the consistency check

Separately from the conditions, put your current construction drawings next to the stamped approved plans and look for differences. Levels, setbacks, window positions, room sizes, materials, roof form. Write down everything that changed.

Small variations can often be absorbed within the CC where the work stays consistent with the consent. Anything more and you're looking at a Section 4.55 modification — which is a separate application, with its own assessment period, sitting directly on your critical path. Knowing that in week one is manageable. Discovering it at lodgement is not.

Every condition is a small project with a lead time and an owner. The consent tells you what. It never tells you who or when — that part is yours to write down.

The conditions worth reading twice

• Anything mentioning a levy or contribution. Section 7.11 or 7.12 contributions and the long service levy must be paid before the CC issues, and the amounts surprise people.
• Anything mentioning a plan you don't have. Waste management, construction traffic, sediment and erosion, tree protection, landscape. Each is a document somebody has to produce.
• Anything mentioning another authority. Sydney Water, Ausgrid, Transport for NSW. External approvals run on their own timelines, and you don't control them.
• Anything with the word "certified". That's a person with credentials who has to sign something — and be engaged in time to do it.

What to do with the finished list

Keep it as a live document, not a one-off exercise. Date each item when it's requested and when it arrives. That single register is the difference between a project you're managing and a project that's managing you — and it's the same register that later becomes your OC evidence file.

If you'd rather not spend the afternoon: send us the notice of determination and we'll do this first pass for you at no cost. You'll get the three columns, the names, and an honest view of the critical path.