What is a BAL Assessment Report?
Bushfire Attack Level or BAL is a method for determining a site’s potential exposure to bushfire using the methods described in Australian Standard AS3959. Your site’s level of bushfire risk is affected by the type of vegetation, distance from the vegetation to your development (home), and the slope that vegetation is on.
BAL ratings are organised into five categories of increasing bushfire exposure, from ember attack at the lower end, (BAL-12.5), to direct flame contact at the higher end, (BAL-FZ). Your site’s BAL level affects your development requirements (e.g., type of building materials etc). Essentially, the higher your BAL, the greater the protection your development will need. In Queensland, the State Government determines areas of potential bushfire threat by using various methods to develop state-wide bushfire prone area mapping and they ensure compliance with bushfire mapping and associated building codes through State Planning Policies (SPP). Councils are required to implement the SPP by including Bushfire Overlay’s in their planning schemes. If you are in a Bushfire Overlay, you must confirm your BAL in a written report as part of your building application. BAL reports can only be done by a suitably qualified or accredited practitioner.
Do you need a BAL Assessment?
Is your development a residential building?
That is, a normal house for one family* or a shed or garage within 6m of an existing or proposed residential building.
*Class 1a or Class 10a structure as described in the Building Code of Australia
No? It’s likely that it’s not required, however always check with us – it’s free!
Are you building in a bushfire prone area?
You will need a BAL report if your property is in a Bushfire prone area.
To find out if you are in a Bushfire Prone area
click here
If you have answered ‘YES’ to either of the above, or you simply want to double check your requirements, let us check further for you.
Disclaimer – The requirement for a BAL can only be confirmed by conducting a site inspection to determine the conditions on and around the site. The information contained on this site is intended for use as a guideline only. No liability is accepted for use of any information on this site.
Our BAL Assessment Process
Do you need a BAL?
Your first step is to discover if you need a BAL. If you answered yes to any of the above questions or would like clarification, let us check for you.
Desktop Assessment
We will then conduct a Preliminary Desktop Assessment. We assess the slope, vegetation and other factors from the information that we are able to source online and through our information network.
Site Inspection
To complete our report, we are required by the relevant standard AS3959, to conduct a site inspection to confirm or update the information gathered from the Desktop Assessment. During this inspection we will confirm all the types of vegetation on and around the site, measure distances to the that vegetation and look at other factors like the slope under any relevant vegetation.
BAL Report
Once we have completed all of the above steps, we will then be able to determine your BAL level and complete the BAL report for you. Delivery timing is dependent on the site location (e.g. remote locations take longer), inspection scheduling* etc., but normally we aim to deliver our final report within 7 days from the site inspection.
*Where possible we try to reduce the transport costs for inspecting remote location by scheduling multiple inspections in the same area. This may result in some delays but allows us to spread those costs over a number of jobs.
