Go back and do it properly

failing to be scrupulous about gathering all the information required.

That’s not a small thing. As with vehicles, building WOFs have a lot to do with safety standards.

It’s easy to understand this when you’re looking at compliance schedules for commercial and industrial buildings with sprinklers, automatic doors that close on alarm, and emergency warning and fire alarms. But even when contact information like phone numbers and addresses are missing, that’s a failure that can have serious consequences during an emergency.

So now the council has to go back to the owners of a fifth of the 900 city buildings requiring these WOFS, sometimes for effortlessly provided missing bits, but sometimes for more problematic catchups involving some expense, when the information is required from independent professionals.

There’s some extra reproach at what, to at least some owners, comes across as the snottiness of the council’s warning that a $500 fine awaits.

It appears that fine has been actioned only once in this context, and to an owner whose WOF has been overdue since August.

But you could understand the displeasure of those threatened with fines unless they’re sharpish about providing the very information the council itself has only, after all this time, bestirred itself to chase them up about -- and then only as a result of a poke in the ribs from MBIE.

And you’d think that the fact we’re on our second incarnation of Stadium Southland might have meant that in the recesses of the civic administration building people would have been pretty vividly seized with the awareness that Building Act requirements might occasionally have a point to them.

That said, the fact remains that the information needed wasn’t provided in the first place. That’s not a matter that should have the owners, or the professionals whose services they paid for, shrugging.

So maybe what we have here, at best, is a cautionary reminder for more than one outfit.

In some quarters they’re calling this a public relations nightmare.

Well there are worse sorts of nightmares. And worse ways to find out you’ve dropped the ball regarding Building Act requirements than by having MBIE go crook at you.