Sustainable refurbishment : new policy initiatives for New Zealand's leaking buildings

Abstract

Faulty constructed and leaking buildings as a result of construction practices in the 1990s and 2000s are costing New Zealand billions of dollars in damage in lost production and repair. To improve the poor quality of building construction, the NZ Government over the last 10 years has implemented a range of legal and financial policies. The Building Amendment Bill No 3 is one such piece of legislation and the latest to be passed by the NZ Parliament on the matter.

The legislation is set to further change building and construction regulations here in New Zealand in that it will put in place a code of ethics for the newly implemented Licensed Building Practitioner scheme, a scheme that requires all builders constructing certain types of work to be licensed. It will introduce “risk based” consenting process for low risk building work, placing more accountability and responsibility on designers, building owners and builders to build correctly, and move responsibility (and liability) away from where it largely resides at the moment, on the shoulders of the Local Council (Territorial Authority).

This paper will provide a brief history of the controversy surrounding building under performance here in New Zealand. It will analyse the submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee overseeing the legislation from the various stakeholders within the industry and evaluate the contribution it will make in the long road back to quality building. The paper supports the view that the transfer of responsibility, of which this Building Amendment bill is a part, runs the risk of failure unless legislative and educational systems supporting the intended role have had time to coalesce and prove their effectiveness.