Whose CPD is it? Company licences, directors and nominated supervisors

A company or partnership contractor licence is a common structure in NSW residential building. It lets the business entity hold the contract, carry the insurance and employ the people. What it does not do is earn CPD. The requirement sits on individuals licensed as a builder or swimming pool builder under the Home Building Act 1989 — contractor licence holders and qualified supervisor certificate holders. The company is not one of those people.

That distinction causes more administrative trouble than almost any other part of the CPD system. A director signs off on the business, assumes the business has the requirement covered, and discovers at renewal that the obligation was never the business’s to meet. It belonged to a named individual, and that individual did not earn the points.

The practical question for a building company is not whether the business is compliant. It is which individuals are licensed, what each of them owes, and who in the office is keeping the record that proves it. This article works through that structure.

Why the obligation cannot sit on the company

The licensing framework separates the entity that contracts from the person who is licensed to do the work. A company can hold a contractor licence, but the licence only functions because a qualified supervisor certificate holder is attached to it. That individual is licensed. The company is not.

CPD follows the licence held by a natural person. A contractor licence holder earns points. A qualified supervisor certificate holder earns points. Directors who hold neither are outside the system entirely, and directors who hold one of those licences are inside it personally, regardless of their role in the business.

This is why a restructure can quietly create a gap. If a long-serving supervisor retires and the certificate is transferred to a younger employee, the obligation moves with the certificate. The business has not changed. The licensed individual has, and the CPD record has to start again in that person’s name.

For a broader walkthrough of how the requirement works at the individual level, the PointCPD guide to NSW builder CPD sets out the mechanics.

Who actually has to earn points in a company structure

Start by listing every individual in the business who holds a contractor licence or a qualified supervisor certificate. That list, not the org chart, is the compliance population.

In a small company this is often the owner-director plus one supervisor. In a larger one it may be a director, two supervisors and a person in the office who keeps a certificate current for historical reasons. Each of them owes the annual requirement independently. There is no pooling.

Two people cannot split a year’s points between them. If one person earns more than they need, the surplus belongs to that person and is subject to the carry-forward cap. It cannot be gifted to a colleague who came up short.

[hpcp_visual id=”who-earns”]

The same logic applies to a partnership. The partnership entity may hold the licence, but each partner who is individually licensed carries their own obligation. A partnership agreement that says nothing about CPD record-keeping is a partnership agreement with a hole in it.

The annual requirement and what happens at renewal

Each licensed individual earns a set number of CPD points per year, in the twelve months before their renewal. The figure is fixed in the NSW requirement; check the current number in the NSW Government CPD guidance before you build a training programme around it, because programme design depends on the number being right.

The consequence of missing it is not a fine at the margin. Renewal or restoration of the licence is refused if the requirement is not met. That is the licence holder’s licence, and if it is the qualified supervisor certificate attached to the company licence, the company’s ability to contract is exposed with it.

Timing is the part that catches people. The twelve-month window runs backwards from each individual’s renewal date, not from the end of the financial year. In a business with several licence holders, those windows are staggered across the calendar. A single training day in November does not serve everyone equally if one supervisor renews in February and another in September.

Carry-forward, and why it is not a buffer

Surplus points can be carried forward, but only up to a cap, and only for a limited period. Points earned beyond that cap are forfeited. They do not sit in an account waiting for a bad year.

Builders often treat carry-forward as insurance. It is not. It is a narrow allowance that helps someone who over-earns in one year and under-earns the next, and it stops helping the moment the surplus exceeds the cap or the carry period runs out.

The safer operating assumption is that each licence holder earns the full requirement inside their own window, every year, and that any carry-forward is a bonus rather than a plan. A business that relies on banked points to cover a quiet year is one audit away from a problem.

Self-recording: the part that actually gets audited

Nothing is submitted to the regulator in the ordinary course. The licence holder keeps a diary and supporting evidence, and produces it only if audited by Building Commission NSW, which runs both regular and random audits. Records must be retained for the period the NSW requirement sets out — check the current retention period in the NSW guidance, because it is measured in renewal periods rather than years and the distinction matters when you are cleaning out old files.

This is where a company structure becomes genuinely harder than a sole trader. A sole trader has one diary. A company with four licensed individuals has four diaries, four evidence folders and four renewal dates, all maintained by people who are busy running jobs.

The failure mode is not missing training. It is training that happened and cannot be proved. A supervisor attends a session, the certificate goes into a glovebox, the ute is sold, and two years later there is nothing to produce.

What a record of attendance has to show

A provider-issued record of attendance is the primary evidence, and it needs to do more than prove someone was in a room. It should identify the participant and their licence number, the course or event title and the CPD topic area it falls under, the course code, the date, time and location, the duration, the assessment type, the trainer’s name and organisation, and the points earned.

If any of those elements is missing, the record is weaker than it looks. A certificate with a name and a date but no topic area is hard to map against the approved topics. A record with no duration is hard to convert into points. A record with no trainer identified is hard to defend as delivered by someone with industry expertise.

File each record against the individual, not against the business. The audit is of the licence holder, and the folder should be organised so that one person’s evidence can be produced without sorting through everyone else’s.

[hpcp_visual id=”record-checks”]

For a closer look at what stands up under scrutiny, see the related article on CPD evidence that survives an audit.

How points are earned, and the two rates

Most CPD is earned at one point per hour for interactive learning on an approved topic with identifiable learning outcomes, delivered by a provider with industry expertise, online or face to face. The activity has to be interactive and the outcomes have to be identifiable. A recorded webinar watched passively with no assessment is a different proposition from a live session with questions and a trainer present.

A higher rate applies to learning with an assessable outcome tied to a National Training Package or a university qualification, delivered by a registered training organisation or an Australian university. That is the pathway for someone doing a formal qualification rather than short courses, and it is worth structuring deliberately if a supervisor is already enrolled in one.

There is also a pathway for employing an apprentice or trainee, or for having a partner or associate learn on the business’s behalf. It earns points at a modest rate and is capped at a combined annual maximum. It supplements a programme; it does not replace one.

Note what is not in that list. NSW describes the activities that count, not the providers that deliver them. Neither Building Commission NSW nor NSW Fair Trading approves or accredits CPD providers on that basis, so a claim that a course is “accredited” by a government body should be read carefully. What matters is whether the activity meets the description: approved topic, identifiable outcomes, interactive delivery, industry expertise, and for the higher rate, an assessable outcome with a registered training organisation or Australian university.

The eight approved topic areas, and why they matter to a business

The approved topics are technical issues, sustainability, compliance, communication, dispute resolution, contracts, safety and business management. Every hour claimed has to sit somewhere in that list.

For a company, the list doubles as a workforce development map. If every licensed individual in the business is spending their whole year on technical issues because that is what the industry default offers, the business is not building capability in contracts or dispute resolution — the two areas where residential builders most often lose money.

It also gives the office a way to spread training sensibly. If three licence holders all need points in the same window, send one to a contracts session, one to a compliance session and one to a business management session, and have them brief each other afterwards. The points are earned individually, but the knowledge transfers.

Worked example: a company with three licensed individuals

A builder in western Sydney runs a company licence with three licensed individuals: the director, who holds a contractor licence and a qualified supervisor certificate, and two site supervisors, each holding a qualified supervisor certificate. The director renews in March, one supervisor in July, and the other in November.

In January the director does a two-day contracts and dispute resolution programme and earns enough points to cover the year. The two supervisors do nothing, on the assumption that the company has CPD in hand. In March the director renews without difficulty. In July the first supervisor’s renewal arrives with no points recorded in the preceding twelve months, and renewal is refused.

The director’s surplus points cannot help. They belong to the director, they are already subject to the carry-forward cap, and they cannot be transferred. The supervisor has to earn the requirement inside their own window, which by July is already partly spent, and the business has to decide whether that supervisor can continue to be the qualified supervisor on the licence while it is unresolved.

The fix is not more training. It is a single shared spreadsheet, owned by one person in the office, listing each licensed individual, their renewal month, their points earned to date, and the folder where their evidence sits. Add a check at the start of each person’s twelve-month window rather than at the end. The cost of that spreadsheet is an hour a month. The cost of the July renewal is a licence.

[hpcp_visual id=”figure”]

Exemptions are narrow, and they are requested, not assumed

Exemptions are available only for serious illness or misadventure, and they are requested on a Request for Exemption form at renewal. They are not a general hardship provision and they are not granted retrospectively because a year got busy.

If an individual in the business has a genuine case, the paperwork is lodged with the renewal, not after it. Waiting until the licence has already lapsed changes the nature of the problem from an exemption request to a restoration issue.

Systems a business can put in place

The obligation is individual, but the administration can be centralised. In practice that means one owner in the office, one register of licensed individuals with their renewal months, one evidence folder per person, and a retention rule that matches the period the NSW requirement sets out.

Keep the register current. When someone leaves, their certificate goes with them, and the register should reflect who is now attached to the company licence. When someone joins and holds a certificate, they enter the register with their own renewal month and their own twelve-month window already running.

Train the licensed individuals to send records in on the day, not at renewal. A provider-issued record that arrives the same week gets filed correctly. A record that arrives eleven months later tends to arrive without its supporting detail.

Review the register before every renewal date in the business calendar, not just the director’s. That single change prevents the failure mode in the worked example above.

Where to go next

If you are working out how the requirement applies to a specific licence class, the PointCPD guide on contractor licence and supervisor certificate CPD deals with the differences. If your concern is the paper trail rather than the points, the article on CPD record retention for NSW builders covers how long to keep things and in what form.

The core point is simple enough to hold in your head. The company holds the contract. The individual holds the licence. The CPD belongs to the licence, which means it belongs to the person, and every licensed person in your business needs their own record, their own window and their own evidence folder. Browse the PointCPD course catalogue to see how the approved topic areas map across a team.

Questions builders ask

• Business
• Compliance
• CPD
• Licensing

Published 1 July 2026. General information for builders, not legal, financial or engineering advice for a specific job. Check current requirements with the relevant regulator or standard before relying on them.