Research and Development

National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) – Assessment Tool

The National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) 3rd edition has been superseded by the free online ‘Housing for Health – the guide’

Housing for Health - the Guide
  • Introduction
  • The Problem
  • The Solution
  • Trial projects
  • Where to next?

Introduction

To produce an assessment tool to be used by a skilled designer/architect to check a set of house plans and specifications against the requirements of the National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) to improve compliance, for new and upgraded houses, with the priorities and targets of the Guide.

Identifying poor environments
Many new and upgrade housing projects did not comply with the items presented in the NIHG.

If built or upgraded without complying with the NIHG, houses often have construction faults or require high levels of maintenance. Maintenance of houses is often difficult due to remote location or limited funding. This can lead to failure of essential health hardware in the house, rendering the house unusable by residents.

Designing for better health
Development of the NIHG Assessment Tool or checklist for designers to determine if the upgrade or new housing project is compliant with the NIHG.

The tool also produced a list of details missing from the documents, needed to comply with the NIHG.

The Problem

Many new and upgrade housing projects did not comply with the items presented in the NIHG. If built or upgraded without complying with the NIHG, houses often have construction faults or require high levels of maintenance. Maintenance of houses is often difficult due to remote location or limited funding. This can lead to failure of essential health hardware in the house, rendering the house unusable by residents.

The Solution

The Assessment Tool was developed to assist the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing assess design documents against the National Indigenous Housing Guide.

The Checklist provided questions that assessed the ‘ensure’, or essential, items within all sections of the NIHG.

The Checklist then produced reports for designers on items compliant with and not compliant with the NIHG.
It also produced a list of details missing from the documents, needed to comply with the NIHG.

Trial projects

The Checklist

  • Was used repeatedly to assess documents in the NT SIHIP program
  • Took 4-5 hours to implement on each set of documents
  • Developed rapidly through the use with real projects
  • Included a pre assessment checklist for design teams to prepare for the assessment
  • Was requested and forwarded to other state housing agencies for their own use (this was a result of presentations at the Stakeholder Meetings).

The Checklist showed that many new and upgrade projects did not comply with the items presented in the NIHG.
Better designers used the Checklist process enthusiastically to check their design work, whilst poorer more ill informed design teams thought the checklist was an additional bureaucratic burden.

A proposal, requested by FaHCSIA, to make an online version of the Checklist was prepared and presented, but no action was taken.

No action was ever taken to follow up on the details of design assessments showing significant lack of compliance to the NIHG.

Location of project : all locations are applicable but skilled assessment is critical when using the Checklist

Where to next?

For information for architects, designers, students, communities, housing managers go to :

Healthabitat website

The National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) 3rd edition has been superseded by the free online Housing for Health the guide

Housing for Health - the Guide
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