AS 3660 termite management: the documents you have to produce

AS 3660 is the Australian Standard for managing termite risk in buildings, split into three parts by the stage of the building's life. AS 3660.1 deals with new construction — the barriers, shielding and treated zones installed while the building is going up. AS 3660.2 deals with buildings that already exist: inspecting them, working out what is happening, and designing and installing a management system around a structure that is already standing. AS 3660.3 deals with assessing a termite management system that is already in place, which is the part you work to when somebody else installed the system and you have been asked whether it still does its job.

The series matters commercially as much as technically. The National Construction Code calls for termite risk management in new buildings and for a durable notice recording what was done, and AS 3660.1 is the method builders, certifiers and insurers expect that work to follow. Professional indemnity cover written for the industry is generally framed around the standard as well, so a report or certificate that does not have the shape the standard expects is the first thing a lawyer or an insurer will pick at.

This guide describes the categories of thing the standard asks for. It does not reproduce the standard and is not a substitute for it: AS 3660 is a copyrighted work sold by Standards Australia, and the current edition you buy from them is the authoritative source. Everything below is general information about how the documents fit together — not legal or engineering advice.

AS 3660.2 organises work on existing buildings around six documents, each with a distinct job: a pre-engagement inspection agreement, a regular inspection report, a special purpose inspection report, a termite management plan, a termite management proposal and agreement, and a certificate of installation.

The order matters more than most operators expect. The pre-engagement agreement is signed before anyone looks at the property, because it is the document that fixes scope, access and exclusions — the things you will later rely on when a client asks why you did not report something you were never able to see. Producing it after the inspection defeats its purpose entirely.

The certificate of installation is what closes the loop. It records what system was installed, where, by whom and when, and it is the document the next operator, the next owner and any future dispute will read first.

A termite management plan is a technical document, not a price. It is issued when live termites are found, and its job is to describe what is happening at that property and how it will be managed — the species and extent of the activity, the conducive conditions feeding it, the treatment approach chosen and why, the sequence of work, and the monitoring and inspection regime that follows.

The proposal and agreement is the commercial document that comes next: the same works expressed as a scope, a price, terms, and the conditions attached to any warranty. Collapsing the two into one PDF is the most common documentation error in termite work. It leaves the client holding something that reads as a sales quote, and the technical reasoning that justified the treatment never gets recorded anywhere — which is exactly what you need if the treatment is later questioned.

Keep them as two documents with two dates. A good test is whether the plan still stands on its own if the client takes the work elsewhere. If it does not read as anything without the price, it was never a plan.

Pre-construction termite management under AS 3660.1 is staged around the build rather than delivered in a single visit. Part A is the under-slab and penetration work, which has to be done before the slab is poured. Part B is the perimeter work, done later, around lock-up. Reticulation systems installed along the way then need recharging on a cycle set by the product's label.

Each stage produces its own certificate, because each stage is separately verifiable and permanently un-inspectable once the next trade covers it. If Part A is not certified before the pour, nobody can ever confirm it was done — no amount of later inspection recovers that.

At handover the builder should receive the certificate of installation and the durable notice fixed to the building, plus, in Queensland, the aspect certificate that goes to the building certifier. The builder, not the eventual homeowner, is your customer, and that changes how the job runs: it is a stage-scheduled multi-visit job on a construction programme you do not control, with dates that move constantly. Treat each stage as its own scheduled visit with its own certificate rather than as one long job you keep reopening.

In Queensland, termite management on a new building feeds a certification chain that ends with the building certifier. A Form 43 aspect certificate is given by a QBCC licensee for the aspect of building work they carried out; a Form 12 is the equivalent given by a competent person. Either way the certificate goes to the building certifier alongside the AS 3660.1 certificate of installation.

Termite building work in Queensland needs a QBCC licence in the relevant class — chemical or physical termite management — on top of the Queensland Health pest management technician licence, plus professional indemnity cover. The two licences do different jobs: one authorises you to apply the pesticide, the other authorises you to carry out the building work. Holding one is not holding the other.

One Queensland quirk is worth knowing. A termite management certificate issued under AS 3660 is deemed to satisfy the statutory pesticide-use record for that activity. That is convenient, but it means the certificate inherits the record's obligations — the five-year retention and the tamper-evidence expectation that applies to pest management records in Queensland. A certificate you can quietly edit after issue is not doing the job the regulation asks of it. Confirm the current requirements with Queensland Health and the QBCC.

Keep every AS 3660 document for at least as long as your state's pesticide record retention period, and longer where a warranty outlives it. Retention is three years in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, five years in Queensland, and two years in South Australia — but a termite system with a warranty attached generates arguments years after the file would otherwise be closed.

The genuinely useful file for a property is larger than the statutory minimum: the signed pre-engagement agreement, every inspection report in date order, the management plan and signed proposal, the certificate of installation, a photograph of the durable notice in place, the chemical application record for each treatment, and the reading history for any stations. That set answers almost every question a future owner, conveyancer or insurer will ask.

File it against the property, not the customer. Properties change hands; the termite history belongs to the building, and the next inspection is only ever as good as the last operator's records.

Most disputes about termite work are documentation disputes rather than treatment disputes. The same handful of failures turn up again and again.

Buy the current edition of AS 3660 from Standards Australia and work to it directly. This guide is a map of how the documents relate to each other, written to help you organise a job; the standard is the authority on what each document must contain, and it is revised.

Nothing here is legal or engineering advice. Licensing, certification and record-keeping obligations differ by state and change — confirm the current requirements with your state regulator, and in Queensland with the QBCC as well.