Engineers in the other states and territories: the ACT, Tasmania and the NT

The ACT’s Professional Engineers Act 2023

The Act started in two steps. Its definitions and some Parts commenced on 6 March 2024; the remainder, including the duty to be registered in Part 4 and the offences in Part 8, commenced on 6 March 2025.

The areas (s 9)

Civil, electrical, fire safety, mechanical and structural engineering, and any other area prescribed by regulation, but not a service prescribed as an exempt area. The Minister may make guidelines describing the scope of each area.

The service (s 8)

An engineering service in one of those areas that applies engineering principles and data to engineering design, or to construction, production, operation or maintenance work, except a service provided only in accordance with a prescriptive standard: a document whose use needs no advanced scientifically based calculations.

The duty (s 14)

An individual must not carry out a professional engineering service unless registered to carry it out. An individual does not need registration if a professional engineer responsible for the service directs and oversees their work.

The offences (ss 58, 59)

Carrying out a service without registration, outside that direction and oversight: a maximum of 100 penalty units where the person is reckless about whether they are registered, or 50 penalty units as a strict liability offence. A false or misleading claim to be registered: a maximum of 50 penalty units where the person is reckless, or 30 penalty units as a strict liability offence. At the Act’s republication of 23 February 2026, an ACT penalty unit was $160 for an individual and $810 for a corporation.

Building work (Regulation, s 4)

The Professional Engineers Regulation 2024 makes it a condition of registration that an engineer not undertake work in the building and construction industry unless the engineer gives the registrar an assessment entity’s report on their qualifications, experience and competencies for that work, and the registrar is satisfied they have them. That work means a professional engineering service, in an area of engineering, that relates to building work.

The public register

The registrar must make these details about each professional engineer available to the public: their name, the area they are registered for, their registration number, the term of their registration, any conditions on it, and its status (s 31). The registrar must not publish an engineer’s details if the engineer asks in writing and the registrar is satisfied that publishing them would, or could reasonably be expected to, endanger anyone’s life or physical safety or jeopardise national security (s 31(3)). The register keeps a former engineer’s details for 10 years after their registration ends (s 30).

Tasmania: a building services licence

Tasmania’s law read for this guide does not register engineers as such. It licenses building services work. Under s 22A of the Occupational Licensing Act 2005, a person must not manage, carry out, or contract to manage or carry out, building services work without a building services licence for the relevant occupation and class. The maximum fine is 400 penalty units for a body corporate and 200 penalty units for an individual. Section 22A(2) sets out exceptions, among them owner builders working under their permit and people employed or engaged by a licence holder of the relevant occupation and class.

Engineering is drawn in by the Occupational Licensing (Building Services Work) Regulations 2016. Their Schedule 1 lists, as prescribed design work, “engineering analysis, design and documentation of any premises, building or temporary structure, or of building components and structural systems, including research, analysing criteria, and finding and analysing solutions”, and regulation 4 makes that prescribed work building services work unless an exclusion applies. The classes of building services work are set by a determination made under s 30 of the Act, which this guide has not read.

Tasmania’s register of licensed tradespeople displays only current licence holders. Its page notes that CBOS “has transitioned to Consumer Affairs Tasmania and Building Standards Tasmania”, with effect from 1 October 2026.

The Northern Territory: certifying engineers

The Building Act 1993, as in force at 10 February 2026, lists five categories of building practitioner: building certifier, certifying architect, certifying plumber, certifying engineer and building contractor (s 4A(1)). A person not appropriately registered must not take or use the title of a building practitioner, or of a category of building practitioner; must not work as one; and must not imply that they are registered or authorised to do work that needs registration. The maximum penalty is 40 penalty units, and the bar on working as one does not apply to an owner-builder doing work their owner-builder certificate permits (s 22).

South Australia and Western Australia

South Australia’s public licensing register, on its page last updated 18 June 2026, covers these occupations, listed here in alphabetical order: builders; conveyancers; labour hire providers; land agents; land sales representatives; plumbers, gas fitters and electricians; property managers; second-hand motor vehicle dealers; security and investigation agents; and tobacco retailers. Engineers are not on that list. This guide holds no South Australian law on engineers, and no Western Australian source on them at all, so it states no rule for either state.

The registration schemes in full: Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. All of them side by side are on the comparison table.