The latest Queensland lands surveying alert sets out the official survey compliance auditing focus for the coming year.

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing, and Regional and Rural Development, says the survey audit selection process enables it to “focus on aspects important to the quality of surveys and includes a random component”.

The Department, in consultation with the Surveyors Board of Queensland, periodically works out specific aspects for targeting with survey audits.

According to the Department, some aspects of that focus are continuing from before because of low compliance rates, while one new aspect has been selected for 2025:

• Surveyors with lower audit compliance rates in the past (continuing),
• Surveyors who operate from locations outside Queensland (continuing), and
• Surveys that include a physical feature boundary (new).

The Department says that due to “improvement in compliance rates for identification surveys, focus for audits of identification surveys has reduced for this year,” although all surveys submitted are still eligible for audit.

In data released in November last year, the Department reported that “aspects with the lowest compliance rates are surveys carried out by surveyors who operate from locations outside Queensland (34% compliant), surveys with ambulatory boundaries (43% compliant), and surveys carried out by surveyors with poor past performance (58% compliant)”.

Since auditing was implemented in mid-2023, the Department has conducted around 140 desk audits per quarter.

The results show that compliance has increased from 46% at the start of the period to 74% during the July to September 2024 quarter.