Unverifiable practitioners
Licences and registrations are checked by screenshot, if at all. Anyone can put a name on a compliance declaration, and synthetic documents make that easier every year.
- Designers
- Builders
- Certifiers
An independent initiative of the selfdriven Foundation · for builders, certifiers, owners and regulators
Verifiable trust for the built environment.
Every building is a chain of promises: designs declared compliant, products certified, work inspected, keys handed over. Most of that chain still lives in PDFs, inboxes and memory. As AI agents begin to check designs, schedule trades and assess defects, knowing who made each claim, and under what authority, matters more than ever.
Explore the research Or start with the 8 Areas of Focus53%
Of NSW strata buildings surveyed in 2023 had serious defects in common property
34%
Of buildings with serious defects reported them to the regulator
3-of-N
Witness threshold securing every building record — no single point of control
Open
Built on open standards (KERI, ACDC, vLEI) — no vendor lock-in, no single registry
Source: Building Commission NSW and Strata Community Association NSW, serious defects survey (2023)
The construction challenge
A building is only as sound as the record behind it.
Designs, product certificates, inspections, variations and handover documents pass through dozens of hands. When a defect surfaces years later, owners are left reconstructing who declared what, and whether they were entitled to. As AI agents start checking designs and inspecting work, that gap only widens.
Compliance has to be verifiable, not assumed.
Read the papersBroken product provenance
Non-conforming and substituted products reach site on paperwork nobody can trace back to the manufacturer, the batch, or the person who approved the swap.
- Products
- Batches
- Substitutions
Accountability lost at handover
Records scatter across firms that may no longer exist when problems appear. Without delegated, revocable authority, no one can say which practitioner, or which agent, answers for the work.
- Handover
- Insolvency
- Delegation
Our focus
Independent research and capability for the people who build, certify and own.
We are not a vendor. We help regulators, builders, certifiers and owners corporations put trust infrastructure in place that they control, on open standards, so the building record outlives any one platform or firm.
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01 · Research & foresight
Evidence for reform
Papers and briefings on defects, compliance failure and record loss, and on how AI agents will change design checking, site inspection and claims.
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02 · Standards & frameworks
Verifiable building records
Open credential schemas for practitioner registration, compliance declarations, product certificates, inspections and handover.
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03 · Advisory
Pilots & capability
Working alongside regulators, builders and owners corporations to take a verifiable record from one project to a whole portfolio, with your people building the capability.
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04 · Industry literacy
Preparing the industry
Practical education for practitioners, strata managers and owners on credentials, wallets and working with AI agents on site.
The construction trust stack
Records you own, on standards no one can revoke.
Every party gets an autonomous identifier: practitioner, firm, project and building. Every claim is a credential anchored in a witnessed key event log, so the root of trust sits with the people accountable for the building, not with a software vendor or a single registry.
Each layer is independently verifiable. A certifier, insurer, regulator or owner can check who declared what, and pre-rotated keys let control pass cleanly from builder to owners corporation at handover.
- L1
Autonomous identifiers
AIDSelf-certifying identity for practitioners, firms, projects and buildings — no central registry to compromise or capture.
- L2
Witnessed key events
KELEvery declaration and change of control is append-only, witnessed, and tamper-evident. A 3-of-N threshold removes any single point of control.
- L3
Verifiable credentials
ACDCLicences, compliance declarations, product certificates and inspection records issued as cryptographically chained credentials.
- L4
Legal entity identity
vLEIBuilders, developers, manufacturers, certifiers and owners corporations hold verifiable organisational identity that outlasts any one project.
- L5
Delegated agent authority
dipAI agents that check designs, inspect work and report defects act only under scoped, time-limited authority delegated from a named practitioner.
Programs of work
Eight areas where construction is most exposed — and most able to act.
Our research and advisory is organised around the selfdriven 8 Areas of Focus, each mapped to a part of the building lifecycle the industry must own as autonomous AI arrives on site.
- 01
Direction
Reform roadmaps aligned with national and state building regulation.
- 02
Engagement
Builders, certifiers, owners corporations, insurers and regulators on one trusted record.
- 03
Enablement
Practitioner onboarding, credential wallets and site-ready tools.
- 04
Protocols
Credential schemas for declarations, products, inspections and handover.
- 05
Sustainability
Material passports, embodied carbon and lifecycle records that stay with the building.
- 06
Processes
Design-to-occupation workflows with verifiable checkpoints.
- 07
Accountability
Audit trails that survive insolvency, staff turnover and handover.
- 08
Organisational
Structure, governance, and the human conductor model on site.
Research & resources
The evidence base.
Selected papers and the public research behind them. The full library is on the resources page.
The framework
The 8 Areas of Focus.
The organisational framework behind our programs of work. Explore each area — its purpose, scope, and how the eight interconnect — as applied to the built environment.
Research
Papers and evidence.
Foundational papers from the selfdriven Institute, and the public research on building quality that frames our work.
- The Trust Deficitselfdriven Institute. Why "it looks legitimate" is no longer a defensible standard, and what cryptographically verified communications mean for institutions.
- The Sovereign Trust Stackselfdriven Institute. A reference architecture for verifiable identity, provenance, and delegated agent authority on open standards.
- Building ConfidenceShergold and Weir (2018). 24 recommendations to improve compliance and enforcement across Australia's building and construction industry.
- Serious defects in NSW strata buildingsBuilding Commission NSW and Strata Community Association NSW. Survey research on how often serious defects occur and how they are reported.
- The full libraryPapers, frameworks and topics from selfdriven Construction.