The nightmare of useless builders
Homeowners who endured a nightmare of shoddy construction call for a national plan to lift building competence, writes Rob Stock.
Marc Collins and his neighbours in the idyllic Auckland waterfront street of Provence Esplanade are calling for politicians to protect ordinary people from incompetent, error-prone builders who hike prices during construction.
That includes creating a national register of licensed building practitioners (LBPs) where councils record the number of failed inspections on homes they’ve worked on.
Collins’ Te Atatu Peninsula home, and those of nine of his neighbours, have been fully reclad in modern weatherboard.
But the pain of getting to that point is illustrated by the 14 failed Auckland Council building inspections, and 4 partial fails, on his home during the reclad, part of remediation by now-bust building company Stanley Ecobuild, part of the Stanley Group of companies which was put into liquidation in September.
That number of failed inspections is dwarfed by the record at his neighbour Stan Baron’s house, which had 22 fails, and 7 partial fails on his home’s journey to weathertightness.
Once properly fixed with trusted materials like weatherboard, a former leaky home suffers no price stigma, so the homeowners of Provence Esplanade have the confidence to speak out in hopes of prompting national change.
The 12 homes in the block were all to be fixed with money from the Financial Assistance Package, which would see the original developer of the homes, Auckland Council and the government footing the bill, apart from small amounts for improvements the homeowners wanted.
But as the job progressed in 2017, the bills for the homeowners rose as Stanley charged ‘‘variation’’ after ‘‘variation’’ on the homes it was remediating.
Charges for failed inspections mounted.
‘‘If I did that in my job I’d get reported to the Real Estate Authority and there would be a complaint,’’ says Collins.
‘‘There’s no-one holding the builders to account.’’
At one stage Collins saw that the window-doors onto his deck were too small. He still struggles to believe the builders did not notice.
‘‘You can’t tell me everyone was seriously that incompetent they didn’t notice, or were they hoping we would not notice?’’
Collins says the complaints schemes covering builders, architects and tradespeople must be strengthened to match the Real Estate Authority, which was created to clean up the real estate sector. Agents who do not meet industry standards can lose their licence.
‘‘The real estate industry was getting away with murder for years, and now there’s accountability, which is great, and the accountability goes all the way to the top as well.’’
Sound building laws and codes needed to be backed up with policing, he says.
‘‘If I speed down the highway, and I get caught, I get a ticket.
‘‘Those guys speed down the highway, and there’s no accountability unless somebody else on the motorway sees them and decides they want to prosecute them.’’
Policing is up to homeowners, he says. Collins, and another of his neighbours, Barry Baker, has complained to the Registered Architects Board about the architect, which they say was hired to manage the project.
The architect, which the Sunday Star-Times has chosen not to name until after the the board’s hearing, was contacted, but did not want to comment.
Stanley Group director Kevin Stanley also declined to comment.
‘‘I cannot talk to you about either of those,’’ he says.
‘‘The first one (Marc Collins’ home) I’m subject to confidentiality, and I won’t breach that, and the second (Stan Baron’s home) is subject to litigation so you will have to talk to Damien Grant (the liquidator of Stanley Group) about that.’’
Collins fought Stanley’s charges, and the company agreed to a settlement.
Collins says the contract price for the reclad was a little over $350,000 excluding GST, but Stanley wanted an extra $150,000 in variations.
‘‘When we finally settled we got away with paying around $70,000 to $80,000,’’ he says.
‘‘Ten to 15 per cent is what your variations should be, if that.’’
Stan Baron and his wife Dominique ended up in mediation with Stanley in June 2017 trying to get the builder to totally redo some of its shoddy work, which Stanley wanted to repair.
Baron was supported in the mediation by Auckland Council and James Hardie.
‘‘Stanley admits the work is defective; it should (be) on this basis alone that the work be made good as new. The defect is a significant lapse of acceptable standards,’’ mediator Leigh Marshall says in his decision.
The Barons say they found 908 nails supposed to be securing rigid air board had been fired into the boards in places where there was no wooden joist behind.
Some had just missed heat-pump pipes, electrical wiring and even a gas pipe, Baron says.
Despite his anger at Stanley, after fighting the business over ‘‘variations’’ that he successfully challenged, he says he felt for the company when Marshall delivered his decision verbally.
‘‘I was embarrassed for them,’’ Baron says. He now believes a pattern of failed inspections for an LBP should lead a council to inform a properly-funded building regulator, who could assess the builder’s competency, and order them to upskill, or remove their licence.
He imagines a world where there’s an online, public register against the name of every LBP where the number of fails on properties they have worked on in any given period is recorded.
This would be a powerful incentive to ensure builders, and the tradespeople they hire to do work for them, were competent.
Every failed inspection means extra cost to the homeowner, he says, not only because faulty work has to be redone, but because a new inspection has
At the time of the Provence Esplanade reclads, the inspection fail rate across Auckland was as high as 35-40 per cent.
Auckland Council