This has prompted warnings the process needs to be handled properly or New Zealand risks another leaky buildings crisis - which last time cost the country about $11 billion.
An open letter to Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk:
Early in 1999, my brother Greg and I realised the leaky building crisis was inevitable, so we blew the whistle (loudly) and eventually change occurred. In conjunction with a revitalised Building Industry Authority (BIA) the country returnedto treated timber framing and solved weather-tightness, mostly. Unfortunately, there was a rush to legislate without understanding the causes.
Successive governments have tinkered with this legislation until we now have the worst of all worlds – an expensive and inefficient industry. It is a system that needs fixing, but this will never happen unless the underlying causes are addressed.
We have a performance-based building code, but no one knows how well our buildings are actually performing. Minister Penk, it now falls to you to correct this.
Building Control Board
Before its demise, the BIA was back on the right track, much like the Australian Building Codes Board, and that is what is needed: a Building Control Board (BCB) to manage operational issues.
This board needs experienced practitioners who understand products, design and review processes and construction with a focus on the common good – to prevent the logjam of self-interests that caused and unnecessarily extended the leaky building crisis.
The benefit in understanding defects
Defects in buildings provide opportunities to improve, however all-important information on defects is currently mostly ignored, except during litigation. Here the information is locked away in confidential files rather than being used to improve the industry and the outcomes for owners.
What is needed is a building intelligence service to register and then audit products by monitoring, recording, and resolving the causes of defects, much like the car industry does.
The resulting knowledge, education and correction are key to an efficient industry. Such a service should sit within a BCB and needs to be scientifically and technically based. Defects commonly result from poor design or construction so information gathered could be used to monitor and improve Licensed Building Practitioner designers and builders.
Competition needs to be unlocked
Products are often marketed as part of a system which in turn allows these products to be sold at a premium. It is the system technical information and support that drives industry acceptance and makes it difficult for other products to compete.
Opening the doors to “tested” products seems simple but is not straightforward as fully assembled system tests are often needed to satisfy our building code. Overseas tests tend to be product-focused rather than performing as part of a system so do not neatly align with our building code. It is not unusual for quoted test certificates to have little relevance to the intended use. And what happens when a product fails?
The better way to open the doors more widely would be to proactively identify appropriate tests, or to create cost-efficient tests, that would allow such products to be used in “approved” systems and then monitored. Such tests and approved systems could be funded through the current building consent levy and administered by a BCB.
Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says the Government is moving forward with its proposal to streamline building consents. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Ratepayers must no longer underwrite the building industry
If a new home owner has a problem, they should be able to have it promptly corrected without the need for a lawyer.
More importantly, the cause of the problem needs to be understood and acted upon in a collaborative manner that seeks to educate and improve, and only, when necessary, impose sanctions.
Residential owners of new builds need protection. Warranty-based organisations that drive responses and learn from defects are best.
These could be insurance-backed warranties, or industry groups. The key is to link new residential building consent authorities to approved warranty providers, much like government has done with Consentium for Kāinga Ora-owned homes. Regulatory approval of such warranty schemes would need to include prudential requirements. This would allow legal liability to be removed from councils for residential buildings, except perhaps for gross negligence as some pain encourages good behaviour.
As non-residential buildings typically involve commercial interests, council liability for these buildings needs to be removed. While the above reforms are aimed at residential buildings, there would inevitably be benefits across the industry and to all building owners.
A personal note
I was raised in a family building business, worked on building sites from a young age, became an engineer, designed and managed building projects and eventually became a building surveyor.
It was only then, that I learnt understanding building defects and their causes was essential to improving building outcomes. Embedding defect analysis and resolution into the building process is essential to improving quality, avoiding rework and will inevitably lead to cost reduction.
