Draftsman loses building licence after making $100k building consent plan errors

Several customers claim they're out of pocket by thousands for "illegible" consent work done by a draftsman. Photo / 123RF

A draftsman has had his licence cancelled after charging a client $100,000 for ‘illegible’ drawings and consent applications that were riddled with errors and couldn’t be granted.

The Auckland-based draftsman was hired to prepare resource and building consent documents as well as draftsman’s drawings for two multi-unit, two-storey projects.

However, the work he submitted was done so poorly the council rejected the application for one and the client had to withdraw the other.

An architect tasked with going over the work found the documents were “illegible” and were not “of any use to it for the purposes of assessing the resource consent application.”

The draftsman, a licensed building practitioner, was referred to the Building Practitioner’s Board which last week opted to cancel his licence because of the expensive errors he’d made for his client.

“This was a failure by the respondent to not only fulfil his contractual obligations to the complainant but also to meet his professional ones,” the board said in its decision.

“The consequences were expensive for the complainant.”

The complainant, who wasn’t named in the board’s decision, said they had tried to recover the $100,000 they’d paid to the man but said he’d been “disengaged and basically uncontactable”.

The draftsman engaged only sporadically with the board throughout the disciplinary process, saying he was unwell as they attempted to schedule hearings in 2022.

According to Companies Office records, his business went into liquidation the same year owing creditors $270,000.

The draftsman has been fined by the board three times before in 2019 and 2020 for similar incidents, where he carried out negligent or incompetent design work for clients.

According to the most recent complaint he was hired to complete building and resource consent design work for two projects in Auckland.

However, the Auckland City Council rejected those plans as they didn’t meet multiple aspects of the Resource Management Act.

An expert witness to the board said the plans “did not address in any useful way” the assessment criteria for the Auckland Unitary Plan.

Another complainant for a separate project said that after they had paid a $15,000 deposit the man became difficult to contact.

The drawings that the draftsman submitted to the council on behalf of that client raised more questions than it answered with the board noting that it was hard to establish what the proposed alterations were.

There was also a lack of consideration in the designs for multiple aspects of the building code, especially in terms of the fire rating for the building.

There were 108 ”incomplete or unsatisfactory answers” in his design work which was submitted to the council.

“The board considers that licensed building practitioners should be aiming to get design work right the first time and not to rely on the building consent authority to identify compliance failings and to assist them to get it right,” their decision on the second complaint said.

“The respondent demonstrated through the significant inadequacies in his documentation that he lacked the skills and knowledge required of a licensed building practitioner and, therefore, that he was incompetent.”

In text messages to NZME, the draftsman said that he’d been unwell since having the Covid-19 vaccine and that he refuted the board’s findings.

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.