A change for the better?

Do you think recent legislation changes will benefit the industry?

Firm: Stockman Builders

Interviewee: David Stockman

Role: Director

Location: Canterbury

Staff: 7

I think that the proposal to regionalise Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) would help us the most. We build all over Canterbury and different BCAs, like Selwyn District Council or Christchurch City Council, would often pick us up on completely different things – for example, we’ve been picked up by one BCA for using nails that were deemed acceptable by another! Having a uniform and consistent approach would make building a lot more efficient.

I also know that the Government is thinking about bringing in remote inspections as the default, and I don’t know how much that would benefit the industry. I’ve done a few remote inspections and they’re hit and miss – it’s actually hard work! For example, during membrane inspections I was on the phone for an hour to an inspector and that’s time that I can’t be working on the job.

I’ve also heard from a friend in Mackenzie District, who said that some houses that received Code Compliance Certificates after a remote inspection had issues because, on video, you can’t judge perspective or heights of key build elements.

In my experience, clarifying minor variations conditions may not have the desired impact. I find that inspectors don’t give a site sign-off to anything that isn’t specified on the plan, even if it has the same performance. Maybe the clarity will change inspectors’ behaviour but I don’t automatically think it will.

Firm: Redwood Homes

Interviewee: Oliver Tracey

Role: Director

Location: Kapiti Coast

Staff: 10

I think that allowing some simple builds to progress without consent could be a good idea, but there needs to be a lot of thought put into how that actually works. At a basic level, I don’t believe you can progress house builds without any inspections at all, and I think there needs to be some documentation process built into the new rules.

Off the top of my head, LBPs could be made to take progress photos of things like top plate fixings, which are then uploaded somewhere to make sure there’s a paper trail during a build. There also needs to be more regulation and strengthened punishment for builders who don’t follow the Building Code, so I would support that. But I think that’s another area that needs to be carefully considered, as you’ll always have people trying to dodge the system.

Relying on punishment to deter bad behaviour while bringing in no-consent builds could be tricky. I wouldn’t like to see a merge of BCAs. We only deal with Kapiti Coast District Council (KCDC), and if that got swallowed into a Wellington BCA, I think it would complicate things. We enjoy a very good working relationship with KCDC, which is a smaller council, and I think if that was to be removed, we’d lose that.

I don’t think the clarification to minor variations will have much of an impact. I think the process is pretty straightforward as it stands, although we process our changes through a designer or architect, which incurs some cost – so avoiding that would be good. Generally, every change we make is followed with an email to the BCA, so all our paperwork is correct and up to date.

Regarding remote inspections, I believe that you need inspectors on site for some things. I don’t think you can go fully remote, and this is another area that legislation would have to be incredibly well thought out to ensure remote inspections don’t miss anything.