Tradies follow rules
Harmony for commercial property sector
The Government is considering bringing the regulations governing the building sector’s trades and professions into line with each other.
At the Certified Builders conference last week, Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith said building was experiencing record activity, with a billion dollars worth of building work consented in a single month last year.
Forty-thousand people were working on building sites that there not there three years ago.
‘‘The sector is booming but with a sector in such a strong growth mode goes an extra requirement for us to keep a close eye on our quality assurance systems. ‘‘
Smith said he would look at harmonising the rules for a wide range of tradespeople, architects and engineers, and possibly look at self-certification, he said.
‘‘We have quite extensive selfregulation right now, for instance with the electricians where they can certify their own work. In other areas, every single piece of work requires inspections. ‘‘
Smith, himself a trained engineer, said there were also anomalies to be plugged.
‘‘You have to be a LBP [licensed building practitioner] to able to build a single-storey building. But you don’t have to be one to build a multi-storey apartment building. That is kind of odd.’’
Another possible area for review was limiting the liability that falls on councils when a building project proves to be flawed and the builders are no longer around.
However, if a council’s liability was capped to around 20 per cent of the bill, who would pick up the other 80 per cent, Smith said.
One idea was a mandatory insurance product that homeowners took in case their house developed later defects. Banks in Australia, England and the US would not offer mortgages without such a warranty, Smith said.
But while Certified and Master Builders offered guarantee schemes, he wasn’t sure they would be rigorous enough for a compulsory regime.
Smith said he was particularly concerned about cases where building firms had collapsed without passing on the money homeowners had paid for a guarantee.
Also in his sights was the quality of building products.
Smith said he planned to present a comprehensive discussion document later this year.
Certified Builders Association chief executive Grant Florence agreed compulsory warranties were worth looking at, but said he felt the new certified builders warranty recently introduced was robust.