Dear Mr Hinton

ABCB comment on submission to Draft Research Report

In its submission, Australian Asset Management Pty Ltd (DR98) makes a series of statements referring to a "drop dead" date on the CD-ROM version of the Building Code of Australia (BCA). A drop dead date is an automatic expiry date from which point the software becomes inoperable. The ABCB Office would like to respond to these statements.

No ABCB products contain an automated date of expiry. Previous publishing contractors of BCA96 did include such a mechanism in the product to ensure that industry was using the latest version of the BCA. However once the ABCB began to manage the CD-ROM in-house, the functionality was immediately removed.

The ABCB recognises that the availability of previous versions of the BCA is a significant issue and has addressed it in several ways:
•	Previous versions of the BCA have been placed on CD-ROM for those
subscribers requesting access to old versions (1988 onwards);
•	The older versions of the BCA are also available online as part of the BCA
subscription service; and
•	BCA 2005 CD-ROM (due out this month) includes all previous versions of the BCA dating from 1988.

Some confusion may still exist due to the existence of a "drop dead" date in a packaged product of the BCA + Standards, however this product is supplied by SAI Global and is subject to their terms and conditions.

The ABCB has no intention of introducing restrictive dates on its CD-ROM products. This will be specified in any contractual arrangements with future product suppliers.

Yours sincerely