The built environment professions may be about to change
Updated: Sep 22
Status: 🟢 Closed for comment
The opportunity
For 25 years, the Council for the Built Environment (CBE) has coordinated six independent professions — architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, property valuation, project and construction management, and quantity surveying — each governed by its own council and its own Act.
The Draft Built Environment Professions Bill, 2026 would end that.
It repeals all seven Acts — the CBE Act and all six professions' Acts — and replaces them with one Act and one regulator. SACAP and its sister councils would cease to exist as independent bodies, becoming internal “professional boards” inside a single national council.
What the new Council would control
Set and control fees across every profession
Run a new credentialing scheme for “high-risk” work
Hold disciplinary power directly, through new statutory tribunals
Administer a new Guarantee Fund to compensate the public
Enforce criminal penalties for impersonation and register tampering
Maintain a national register with blacklisting powers
Timeline and how to respond
Comments on the Bill are open for three weeks from its circulation on 2 September 2026, closing 23 September 2026. SAIA has already engaged DPWI directly on the Bill and is preparing a position paper covering both procedural concerns and the substantive institutional and governance implications for architecture as a profession.
Members wishing to make their own submission, or to feed input into SAIA's position paper, are encouraged to contact the national secretariat.
Comments