Builder Kiel Rangi keeps licence after skipping out on $70k botch-up

The client of a builder who skipped out on a job after making $70,000 worth of errors is concerned he’s been allowed to keep his licence.

Kiel Rangi’s work on the house was so poorly done that another builder said it had taken more time to fix his mistakes than it should have taken from start to completion, had it been done correctly.

The remedial builder said all of the walls were “terribly out of plumb” and he’d had to strip off all the weatherboards, straighten all of the walls and remove 90% of the cavity battens.

The client, a developer, estimated the errors alone cost her company $70,000 and complained about Rangi’s contact to the Building Practitioner’s Board, which has recently fined him $5000 for negligent and incompetent work and a further $2000 for failing to sign the work off.

All the weatherboards had to be stripped and the walls straightened in the house Rangi built. File photo / 123RF

It’s a penalty his client, who has name suppression, says doesn’t marry up with the damage he caused.

“The point is that he can still continue building like a cowboy,” she said.

“I just don’t want anyone else to put up with what he had to.”

The woman said she would have expected a suspension or even a cancellation of his licence would have been appropriate.

“It’s just really frustrating.”

The woman said it affected her reputation because there was only so much blame she could apportion to Rangi.

“At the end of the day, it was our company’s name on the sign so we were the ones who had to wear it.”

Most of the walls were out of plumb by up to 15mm over 2.4 metres. Photo / Supplied

Rangi was hired by the developer in 2022 to construct the house on the Kāpiti Coast, but she told a hearing last year that towards the end of the build, Rangi stopped work and ceased communicating with her.

“He would not return phone calls, emails, texts … he just sort of put his hands up and walked away,” she said.

The woman said four months’ worth of remediation had been needed to bring the house up to code and standard, which cost $70,000 in labour and materials.

Another builder gave evidence to the board that all the walls were “terribly out of plumb” by up to 15mm across 2.4 metres. The Building Code allows for a variance of 4mm.

Many of the weatherboards had to be removed and replaced. Photo / Supplied

He said 90% of the cavity batten screws were missing the studs and had to be removed, many of the weatherboards had been installed incorrectly, and the rest were stored incorrectly, so they had to be scrapped.

“This was a very simple house to construct so in my professional opinion the work completed prior to us arriving was not anywhere near good enough,” the remedial builder said.

“It took us more time fixing all the issues than the whole job should have taken start to completion.”

Rangi didn’t attend the hearing into his conduct and requested the board adjourn so he could file submissions. In those submissions, he questioned the competence of the remedial builder hired to fix his work.

Rangi said he worked on the building himself but also managed four staff who carried out the bulk of the work. He told the board he felt let down by the job they did.

He also told the board he was new to contracting, was finding his feet and had been let down by others, and was hit with the sudden departure of a key staff member as well as running into financial difficulty.

This week, the board found Rangi guilty of supervising building work in a negligent manner and failing to provide a certificate for the restricted building work he did complete.

“As there was clear evidence of substandard work that had to be remediated, the Board finds that the Respondent’s supervision was inadequate and that it did not meet an acceptable standard,” its ruling reads.

“The simple fact is that the Respondent did not supervise, and the issues complained about arose because of that.”

Rangi did not respond to requests for comment.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.