Tradie Forms: finish TAS Form 71B on the official standard of work certificate layout while the job, owner, and licence details are still in front of you. Preview the PDF, catch gaps, and lodge a clean copy with the owner and permit authority so the certificate of completion is not held up.
The plumbing work is signed off in your head, the fittings are in, and the drainage is connected. In Tasmania the job is not actually closed until the standard of work certificate reaches the right people. Form 71B is that certificate, and it is the document that lets the permit authority move to a final inspection and then a certificate of completion. Lodge it late, send it to the wrong council, or leave the owner off, and the last step of the job stalls.
This guide is about the lodgement and completion side of Form 71B. It covers when the certificate is due, who has to receive it, how permit work and notifiable work differ on the form, and what happens once it lands with the permit authority.
If you are closing out a job today, open the guided TAS Form 71B standard of work certificate and fill it before you pack up. Browse other TAS plumbing forms or read the TAS plumbing forms list to see where Form 71B sits alongside the start-work notice and the completion records.
What Form 71B certifies
Consumer, Building and Occupational Services lists Form 71B as the approved standard of work certificate for plumbing work. It is the plumber's statement that the plumbing work described on the certificate has been carried out. Under the Building Act 2016, a standard of work certificate for notifiable plumbing work is what feeds the certificate of completion the permit authority issues at the end of the job.
The certificate is not the same thing as the permit or the notice you dealt with before you started. Those authorised the work. Form 71B closes it. It sits at the completion end of the job, next to the final inspection, and it only goes on once the relevant work is genuinely finished.
Because the certificate drives the next official step, the detail on it has to match the approval and the site. A certificate that names the wrong permit authority, describes the work as "plumbing" with no substance, or leaves the owner block empty is the kind of thing that gets queried before the permit authority will inspect.
Permit work or notifiable work
Form 71B has a work type section, and the tick you put there has to match how the job was authorised. Getting this right matters because permit work and notifiable work follow slightly different paths to the same certificate.
Permit plumbing work needs a plumbing permit from the permit authority before it starts. Notifiable plumbing work is authorised through a notice and a certificate of likely compliance rather than a full permit, but it still has to be designed and carried out by licensed people and still ends with a standard of work certificate. Both pathways finish with Form 71B, and both lead to a certificate of completion once the permit authority is satisfied.
The mistake to avoid is ticking the pathway that "feels close enough" because the PDF needs an answer. Check the approval documents. If the job was permit work, the certificate should say permit work. If the classification is genuinely unclear on a particular job, confirm it against current CBOS guidance and the permit authority before you issue the certificate rather than guessing on site.
Who receives the certificate
This is the part that trips people up. Form 71B has two recipients, not one.
The permit authority, which is usually the council, receives the certificate so it can arrange the final inspection and issue the certificate of completion. The owner also receives a copy. The form carries a note that a copy must be forwarded to the owner, so the owner block is a real part of the certificate and not optional admin.
Confirm the owner details separately from whoever met you on site. On a lot of jobs the person on site is a builder, a project manager, a tenant, or an agent, and the owner named on the certificate has to be the actual owner. A saved owner block from an old booking is one of the quicker ways to send the copy to the wrong person.
If your business works across several Tasmanian council areas, check the permit authority against the site and the approval before you lodge. The authority that issued the permit or received the notice is the one that gets the certificate, and it is easy to carry the last job's council across without noticing.
The 5 business day window
Once the work is complete, the certificate is due promptly. Councils acting as permit authority ask for the Form 71B, along with an as-constructed drainage plan where the work involved drainage, within 5 business days of completing the work. Sorell Council, for example, sets out that the plumber submits the standard of work certificate and as-constructed drainage diagrams within 5 business days, after which a plumbing surveyor conducts the final inspection.
Five business days moves quickly when the certificate is sitting half-finished in the ute. The practical fix is to complete Form 71B at the job while the work, the site, and the records are in front of you, then lodge it the same day rather than at the end of a busy week.
The as-constructed drainage plan is part of this deadline, not a separate afterthought. If the job involved sanitary drainage or stormwater, the plan showing what was actually built travels with the certificate. Keeping the two together means the permit authority is not chasing you for a drawing before it will inspect.
Certificate of likely compliance references
Where the job ran as notifiable work, or where a certificate of likely compliance was issued, Form 71B has a section for the reference numbers. These tie the finished certificate back to the approval pathway that authorised the work.
Copy the reference from the current approval, permit, or certificate of likely compliance document. Do not lift it from an old email chain or a similar job for the same builder, because reference numbers on repeat jobs blur together fast. A wrong reference number is a small typo that can send the whole certificate back for correction.
If the section does not apply to your job, leave it out cleanly rather than filling it with a number that belongs to another approval.
Getting the work site and description right
The work site section captures the address, lot number, and certificate of title number where relevant. For rural properties, units, subdivisions, and multi-stage jobs, put in enough detail that the permit authority, the owner, or the next plumber can identify exactly which work the certificate covers. On a staged site, "the plumbing" is not enough to tell one certificate from the next.
The standard of work description is the part that carries the meaning. "Plumbing work completed" tells the owner and the permit authority nothing. Name the work and where it went:
- Install hot and cold water reticulation for new dwelling
- Complete sanitary drainage and sewer connection for unit 2
- Install roof plumbing and stormwater connection to approved layout
- Complete on-site wastewater system installation and commissioning
Keep it short, but make it specific enough that someone reading the certificate later knows what was actually done. This description is also what a plumbing surveyor reads before the final inspection, so it should line up with what they will see on site.
What happens after you lodge
Lodging Form 71B is not the finish line, it is the trigger for the last steps. Once the certificate and any as-constructed plan reach the permit authority, the authority arranges a final inspection, usually carried out by a plumbing surveyor. If the work is satisfactory, the permit authority issues a certificate of completion for the notifiable plumbing work under the Building Act 2016.
That completion certificate is what the owner and the permit authority treat as the formal close of the plumbing work. Your Form 71B is the plumber's part of that chain. If your certificate is clean and lands on time, the inspection and completion follow without you being chased. If it is missing details or arrives late, that final step waits on you.
Keep your copy of the certificate with the rest of the job record. The start-work notice where one applied, the permit or certificate of likely compliance, the as-constructed drainage plan, inspection notes, and the owner's copy should all sit together. That record is what answers questions from the permit authority, the owner, or the next plumber long after the site is finished.
How Tradie Forms helps
Tradie Forms turns Form 71B into guided sections that follow the order of the official certificate. You work through the permit authority, plumber, owner, work type, certificate of likely compliance references, work site, standard of work description, and certification instead of scanning a flat PDF for the next blank.
Your plumber licence and business details are saved and reused, so the contractor fields are not retyped on every Tasmanian job. Tasmanian address search fills the site and owner blocks, and the form flags missing required fields before you download, which is what catches the empty owner block or the blank work description before the permit authority does. You preview your entries mapped onto the official Form 71B PDF layout, then download the finished certificate to lodge with the permit authority and hand the owner their copy.
Tradie Forms maps your entries onto the official layout. It is not affiliated with CBOS or any Tasmanian permit authority, and it does not decide whether the work complies or how it is classified. The licensed plumber remains responsible for checking the work, the pathway, and the exported PDF before it is lodged.
Start the TAS Form 71B standard of work certificate at the job, or browse more TAS plumbing forms for the rest of your Tasmanian plumbing paperwork.
Official references
Check the CBOS approved forms page for the current Form 71B, the CBOS guide to approved plumbing forms for how the certificate is used, the Building Act 2016 (Tasmania) for the standard of work certificate and certificate of completion provisions, and the Sorell Council plumbing page for the lodgement window and final inspection process. Permit authority processes vary between councils, so confirm the local lodgement method and current timeframes before you certify a job.