How Nine In Six keep The Block compliant at TV speed

Meet Nine In Six

Nine In Six Builders are a high-end Melbourne residential builder, and for years they have been the builder behind The Block on Channel 9. Each season, five houses are renovated or rebuilt by five contestant teams on a television schedule, with Nine In Six running the site underneath it all.

"Nine In Six are a high-end builder. We do The Block and have done for years now, along with other residential builds throughout Melbourne," says Site Admin Liam Howell.

Director Aidan O'Shannessy's job swings between both ends of the business while the show is on. "My role at Nine In Six is pretty broad, from high-level director duties to a full site management role while we're on The Block."

He has lost count of how many seasons he has built, but not of how hard they are. "I've never done an easy Block yet," he says, "and I think it's number 17 or something like that, this one."

The Challenge: Compliance on Steroids

The work itself is familiar residential construction. Everything around it is not.

"It's not the basic roles and duties you do, but it's just amplified so much with the condensed timeframes, the amount of people on site," Aidan says.

• A crowd on site every day. Liam puts it at anything from 150 to 250 people a day, across dozens of trades.
• Six jobs in one. Nine In Six run the main build, and each of the five contestant teams brings in its own trades, often 10 to 15 companies per house.
• A television timeline. Five houses, compressed into a matter of weeks, with no room for a trade to wait on paperwork.
• An audience that notices. Millions of people watch each night, and so do regulators.

"Compliance on any project's challenging. On The Block, compliance is on steroids a bit, and even more challenging."

For Aidan, the stakes aren't about the cameras. They're about what happens when something goes wrong.

"You don't know you've got bad compliance until something goes wrong," he says. "Then you really wish your systems and processes and record-keeping were much better than they were at the time."

"It is so important for us to keep on top of our compliance, not just because there's two and a half million people a night watching, but for our own business protection and our own peace of mind. Having things compliant from a quality and an OH&S point of view is a really high priority for us."

Why BuildPass

Nine In Six have run compliance on paper, and on more than one system since. That scale, Aidan says, is exactly what pushed them toward something more commercial than a typical residential builder would use.

"It's something that's not quite like a normal residential construction project, which leads us to having more commercialised systems and involvement from people like BuildPass," he says. "Over the last 17 seasons we've gone from paper-based systems through to now using electronic systems to manage our compliance on The Block and all our projects at Nine In Six."

What won them over was how little it asked of the people using it.

"The BuildPass platform is rather intuitive in how you use it. There's a level of getting in and doing it and just being able to navigate through it, which is quite powerful, and it was a reason why we decided to make the change over to BuildPass."

For Liam, who runs the platform day to day, it comes down to three things: ease of use, fast support, and a team that listens.

"It's something that's easy to use, first of all, something that's got good support, which we found has been great with BuildPass, both online or over the phone," Liam says. "And the ability to give that feedback and then get changes made that suit what we need, because we are a specific type of job."

"We love the fact that BuildPass is developing every day with us," Aidan adds. "We've seen changes and updates and improvements."

1,000 Inductions in Under 12 Weeks

Every worker on site starts with an induction, and on The Block that means a lot of them, fast.

"On The Block we've inducted over 1,000 people in less than 12 weeks," Aidan says. "That's quite a heavy workload for the system, and a workload that's probably much bigger than you would normally have building five houses in a residential setting. But BuildPass has really helped us get really good compliance across those inductions."

The point isn't just collecting the paperwork. It's being able to use it once the worker is through the gate.

"Getting the SWMS, getting the tickets, getting everything that we need to record and monitor, but in a usable fashion. Being able to then use that data to help us manage the site after the induction, not just have it on a piece of paper in a folder, is really powerful."

Contestants' Trades, Onboarded With a Link

Each house brings its own trades, often 10 to 15 companies per house. Liam brings each one in without a back-and-forth of emails.

"We just grab a couple of details from them, send out an invite link, and they can upload all the files that we need," he says. "Then each worker can just come in for an induction, which again, the process is super easy."

Running five houses and a main build also means everyone needs a different slice of information, so Nine In Six set each house up as its own job.

"Without BuildPass it would be pretty hard for us to keep everything on track," Liam says. "Being able to separate each job allows us to get the individual houses the information they need, and keep the main stuff away from them. It makes it as efficient as possible for the people that need to see everything, but also for the people that just need particular information."

Compliance That Shows What's Coming

Insurances, SWMS and licences all expire at some point. On The Block, a lapse can't wait for an audit to find it.

"In terms of compliance, we get pretty much full visibility," Liam says. "We ask for specific things from contractors around insurances, safe work method statements, all that sort of thing, so I'm able to see whether companies have uploaded them and when things expire. The homepage shows you things that are coming up and expiring, and allows us to focus on those."

Diaries, Safety Walks and Defects, Every Day

Liam's daily rhythm runs through site diaries and safety walks. When anything needs action, it goes straight to the worker.

"BuildPass is really efficient in terms of us uploading site walks, defects, all that sort of thing, and then getting them out to the people that need that information. Generally they'll just get a notification through the app, and they can see whatever new information we've uploaded and go from there."

That includes the defects walk at the end of the build, when Nine In Six and the Channel 9 team go room by room through each house.

"They'll take photos, they'll have an individual defect for something like paint not complete or stairs not finished. Then they'll allocate them out to each worker," Liam says. "Through their worker app they'll be able to see the defect, have photos of what it is, information about what needs to be done, and then add photos and complete the defect."

AI That Pitches In

The team has been quick to pick up BuildPass's AI tools, starting with defects. The morning of the shoot, Aidan's team found a new use for BuildPass Agent.

"We were working just this morning with the team and found out that we could use the AI agent to do something we couldn't," Aidan says. "We were duplicating actions with AI and even getting AI to slightly change those actions. We entered it once, then used the agent to create it, duplicate it, edit it."

"We're certainly really enjoying the plans module coming through with the drawings, now the RFIs, now our even better AI integrations. We're really watching our ability to save time and create efficiencies start to grow."

The Results

Since the first sign-on in October 2025, the main build and the five houses have run their compliance through BuildPass. By mid-October 2026:

• More than 13,800 worker sign-ons
• More than 950 unique workers on site
• More than 100,000 hours on site
• More than 2,000 inductions
• More than 8,500 forms and inspections
• More than 25,000 photos and files
• More than 120 companies on the main build

More than 1,000 workers were inducted in under 12 weeks, with SWMS and tickets captured on the way in. Every contestant's trades are accounted for. Expiring insurances and SWMS surface on the homepage before they become a problem. And thousands of forms, inspections, photos and defects are logged against the right house, with nothing sitting in a folder.

"The whole site is really coming together in one place, which gives us better visibility than we've ever had before, from a compliance point of view, from a safety point of view and from an efficiency point of view," Aidan says.

Not One Feature, the Whole System

Asked to pick the single feature that matters most, Aidan couldn't, and that was his point.

"It's really difficult to isolate any one feature of BuildPass that saves us more time or creates a better site, because it's the whole ecosystem that really drives our ability to be efficient. It drives our ability to be as compliant as we hope anyone can be. It's a constant strive for betterment every day, to try and be that little bit better."

The Block will always be a hard job. Five houses, five contestant teams, hundreds of workers and a national audience don't get simpler. What has changed is that the compliance behind it all lives in one place, and keeps up.

"BuildPass and some really good people we've had around us have really helped us elevate our compliance. And our constant goal of getting better at it every year has been helped a lot by our partnership with BuildPass."

"I would definitely recommend BuildPass to other construction businesses."

Aidan O'Shannessy, Director, Nine In Six Builders