Contrasting inspection experiences

Builders’ Business is a column by builders for builders. Its objective is to provide a forum, particularly for small business operators, in which to share knowledge, experience, tips and ideas

Q. Have you been impacted by increased inspection wait times?

 

Firm: Home Trends Builders 

Interviewee: Peter de Gouw

Role: Director

Location: Christchurch

Staff: 12

We’re severely affected by the increase in inspection wait times. We’re sitting at seven weeks for an inspection in Christchurch, which makes finishing jobs nigh impossible, as we’re not allowed to book our next inspection until the current one is finished.  

We have buildings sitting idle, because we can’t get things like pre-roof, pre-lining and final inspections. In my experience, virtual inspections aren’t the answer. We tried to get a virtual pre-roof inspection, but the council won’t do them because they say it’s too dangerous.  

There are a few things that could be changed to ease the pressure on inspectors. LBPs should be given more responsibility to do small inspections, such as tanking inspections, or post lining. At the moment, we have at least 14 inspections per build! 

Engineers should also be able to carry out their own inspections on things like raft foundation and pre-pouring, as they’re probably more qualified than the inspectors anyway. 

The problem seems to be a Christchurch City thing, as we’re doing a bit of work in Waitaki that got a consent in nine days. For contrast, I have some consents that have been with Christchurch City Council for 57 days and they haven’t been picked up yet!

 

Firm: SLC Builders

Interviewee: Cory Carroll

Role: Director/Lead Builder

Location: Wellington

Staff: 4 

I haven’t seen a lot of inspection delays across the two councils I work with, which are Lower Hutt and Wellington City. 

They have both been really good to us. We’re a small company, so we’re not doing a huge volume of work, and we’ve found that wait times have got better over the past 12-18 months. My assumption is that they’ve improved their systems or moved some admin work away from on-site inspectors to free them up for actual inspections.  

I knew that virtual inspections were being talked about, but I didn’t know they were accepted practice! 

We’ve never had to use one, although we did have an incident where an inspector couldn’t attend a booked inspection, so we had to produce a PS3 (Producer Statement Construction form). In my 20+ years in the industry, I’ve never had to do that before. 

However, we are a smaller firm, so I imagine things are different for the larger companies, who would be under more stress and pressure.

 

Firm: Lifestyle Builders

Interviewee: Scott Siffleet  

Role: Director 

Location: New Plymouth

Staff: 9

We’ve had some inspection delays and that’s meant we’ve had to be more organised. You used to request one and have someone come the next day, but now the time has increased to about a week, which means extra planning.

It has taken about a year for it to get to this stage, and at worst we’ve had to wait two weeks for inspections. I think that was due to the council being short staffed with people off sick, and now that things seemed to have calmed down, the wait time has reduced from that high point.

We’ve normally got a few jobs on at once, so if we have to pause work because we can’t progress without an inspection, we can usually shift builders to another site.

I think that councils could help themselves by trusting LBPs more and getting the word out about online inspections. We have an in-house app that we use to document everything, and we could easily use that evidence for online inspections. Additionally, LBPs should be able to inspect small things themselves – for example, checking screw patterns on post lines.

One thing that I think is really strange is councils sending consents to be reviewed by other councils. I never knew this happened, until we sent a consent to Stratford Council for approval and it came back with comments on it for rules that don’t apply in Taranaki! It made me want to tear my hair out.