Clear advice from the person who inspects your pool.

Book, and you get one certifier the whole way through. The person who answers your call is the one who turns up, makes the call on the day and signs the certificate. Start to finish, you only ever deal with me.

I came to pools from the structural side

I came to pool certification from the structural side. My background is structural engineering, geotechnical investigation and residential building consultation: years spent measuring ground conditions, testing what sits beneath a site, and advising homeowners on how their buildings actually behave. A pool fence is a small structure with a serious job, and it sits where everything I had been doing meets: ground levels, fencing, gates, landscaping, and how a backyard really gets used. I registered as a certifier because it let me do the part of the work I like most: finding the practical fix that gets a family’s pool safe and certified.

More than a fence inspection

A pool is not just its fence. I look at the whole poolscape as one system: the fence design and height, the gates and their hardware, the non-climbable zone around the outside, the required signage, and every place the pool meets the house, the doors and windows, the boundary, the decking and the landscaping. Ground level is where I start, because I have spent years measuring it: a garden bed or a bit of built-up mulch against the fence quietly shortens your fence, and that is one of the most common reasons a fence that looks fine does not pass.

I also work out which rules apply to your pool before I judge it, because the pool’s age, its approvals and any later work can change the standard it is measured against. The full overview is in the NSW pool compliance guide.

If you want the inspection process itself, start with what happens at your pool inspection.

What I can sort on the day, and what needs a trade

Many of the things that fail an inspection are small: a latch out of alignment, a hinge that has lost tension, a sign that has faded, a gap that has opened up under the fence. If it is minor, we work out how to put it right there and then, and often I can take care of it on the day rather than send you back. If your pool needs structural fence work or a replacement section, that is a fencing job, not an inspection job, and I will tell you straight and point you at exactly what to ask for.

Check me before you book

Every registered certifier in NSW is on the public register. Before you book anyone, me included, search their name or registration number on the NSW Fair Trading register and make sure the person quoting you is the person who is actually registered. Mine is Craig O’Connor, Registered Certifier BDC05248, Swimming Pool Inspector. Check it.

Why I only work for homeowners

Under the Swimming Pools Act 1992 the pool owner engages the certifier, so you are my client, always. Agents and conveyancers are welcome to send this site to their vendors, but the person I answer to is the owner standing next to the pool.

Away from the job

I am a father of six, which is most of the reason pool safety is not an abstract idea to me. Away from work I coach powerchair football with the Western Sydney Wanderers FC Powerchair Team, competitive football for athletes living with disability.