A fire plan is not the building's job: what regulation 43 expects of hotels, schools and shopping centres

Rulebook one: the building

The National Construction Code, Volume One carries the built fire-safety provisions for commercial and public buildings: Section C on fire resistance (compartmentation, separation, protection of openings), Section D on access and egress (provision for escape and the construction of exits), and Section E on services and equipment, which covers firefighting equipment, smoke hazard management, and visibility in an emergency including exit signs and warning systems. The code scales those requirements by building classification, which is why a hotel, a school and a shopping centre each get different sprinkler, alarm and egress treatment from the same code. NCC 2025 was published on 1 May 2026, and its adoption is staggered: the ACT, Tasmania and Victoria adopted from 1 May 2026, New South Wales and Queensland follow on 1 May 2027, and the Northern Territory has not adopted it. Until then the earlier edition keeps applying in the later states, so a national operator can face two current NCC editions at once.

What the NCC cannot do is evacuate anyone. It is a design-and-construction code administered through building law, not a workplace-operations instrument. The alarm it requires is only useful if somebody has decided who activates it, who sweeps the floor, and where two thousand shoppers assemble. That is the WHS layer.

Rulebook two: the workplace

Under WHS regulation 43, a PCBU must ensure an emergency plan is prepared and maintained for the workplace. The work environment code states the mandatory spine: emergency procedures covering an effective response, evacuation, notifying emergency services at the earliest opportunity, medical treatment and assistance, and communication between the person coordinating the response and everyone at the workplace; testing of those procedures, including how often; and information, training and instruction for the workers who must carry them out. The plan must be built on the actual hazards of the actual workplace, sized to the work, the location and the number and composition of people present, and fire is only one of the emergencies it names alongside chemical release, medical emergency, natural disaster, bomb threats, violence and robbery.

The code's list of what procedures should address reads like a high-occupancy audit: wardens with allocated roles, alarm activation, visitors and shift workers and tradespeople, people who need assistance to evacuate, safe places, a displayed site plan showing fire protection equipment and emergency exits and assembly points, out-of-hours contact numbers, emergency services access, and regular evacuation practice drills at least every 12 months. Emergency lighting for safe evacuation is a must, and the code's own checklist asks whether the fire protection equipment matches the risk, giving foam or dry powder extinguishers for flammable-liquid fires as its example. For the fuller detail on emergency planning documents, the code points to AS 3745-2010, Planning for emergencies in facilities (a paywalled standard we name but do not reproduce), and Safe Work Australia's emergency plans fact sheet.

The shared-building question: whose plan is it?

The legacy pages this article replaces asked the same question five ways, for hotels, schools, shopping centres and office buildings, and the code answers it directly. For a workplace shared by a number of businesses, and it names shopping centres, construction sites and multi-tenanted office buildings, preparation of the emergency plan should be coordinated by the person with management or control of the workplace: the property manager, principal contractor or landlord, in consultation with all tenants. A new business moving in should trigger a review of the existing plan, in consultation with workers and their health and safety representatives. Coordination does not transfer the duty: regulation 43 sits on each PCBU, so a tenant cannot simply assume the landlord's binder covers them.

The code then flags the situations that need a more comprehensive plan, and they map exactly onto high-occupancy work: people sleeping on site, with hotels as the named example; large numbers of people at the site at the same time, with stadiums named; high-risk chemical processes and major hazard facilities; and significant cash handling outside business hours. Where hazardous chemicals exceed the manifest quantity, a parallel duty under regulation 361 requires the emergency plan to be given to the primary emergency services organisation and revised on its recommendations, the territory of our chemical-storage story. If the consequences of an emergency would be significant, the code says to consult local emergency services when developing the plan rather than after it fails.

What changed in December 2025, and what to do now

The December 2025 edition is the code's second refresh in two years: the amendments page records a 2024 review reflecting changes to the model WHS Regulations and the psychosocial code, and a December 2025 update adding information on access to period products at work. The emergency-plan chapter's requirements are not new law, which is exactly why they are hard to argue with: regulation 43 has sat underneath them throughout. The practical move for a high-occupancy operator is the code's own checklist: is the plan written, current and accessible; are wardens appointed and trained; is the site plan displayed; does anyone account for people after evacuation; has a drill actually run in the last 12 months; and do the neighbours, whose fire can become yours, know how you will alert them. On the building side, note which NCC edition your jurisdiction applies before signing off any fit-out that touches exits, alarms or sprinklers.