Housing scandal brewing
A widespread reliance on written building contractor reports, rather than verifying the building process itself, was key to the failure of the Bella Vista subdivision.
Such a reliance was highlighted as a major factor in the leaky homes scandal.
The failures that led to the March 9 evacuation of 21 Bella Vista Homes had its beginnings in Tauranga City Council’s granting of resource consent.
The subdivison required a second geotechnical report once it was altered to create infill housing, but council granted resource consent without it, never informing Bella Vista Homes it was needed. But the resource consent mistakes were just the first in a series of failures. An overreliance on producer statements by council code compliance assessors is where the wheels truly fall off.
A producer statement is a professional opinion provided by those involved in the building process. They usually carry an insurance guarantee.
Tauranga City Council general manager CE Group Kirsty Downey agreed that producer statements written by any Chartered Practitioner of Engineering (CPeng) member will be accepted as read with no followup checks done.
However, producer statements hold no status under the Building Act of 2004. Even so, they are widely used by councils in New Zealand when codes of compliance are issued.
‘‘We receive the PS4 [producer statement 4, provided after construction is finished] during the inspection process or at the end of the job, so it is very rare that we would inspect after receiving a PS4 from a Chartered Professional Engineer,’’ building inspections leader Kirsty Downey said.
‘‘In general, we review documentation provided to assess if it is adequate to cover the requirement of the consent.’’
The exact same practice was highlighted in the 2002 Building Industry Authority-appointed Weathertightness Overview Group’s report on aspects of the leaky homes saga.
‘‘In many cases, these appraisals and statements are being accepted without any additional scrutiny,’’ its report reads.
‘‘It is generally accepted that territorial authorities and building certifiers cannot be expected to have the skill base necessary to review and approve all alternative solutions.
‘‘Consequently, a dependency on producer statements and product appraisals has built up, which, in the view of the Overview Group, is less than satisfactory.’’ This was tested in Justice Murray Gilbert’s 2014 ruling in the Nautilus case, which ordered Auckland Council to pay $23.7 million. The case is regarded as the benchmark for leaky homes in New Zealand.
‘‘It would not be appropriate for a territorial authority to accept any producer statement without question,’’ the ruling noted.
The Waikato Times was able to obtain copies of nearly every producer statement issued to the affected homes on Lakes Boulevard, but does not yet have permission from homeowners to publish this data.
Engineers who signed off producer statements, including assessment of the ground quality now being questioned, for the subdivision were contacted, but all said they were unable to comment publicly.
The council-commissioned report into the matter by multinational engineering firm AECOM, however, was scathing.
‘‘Inspections by the majority of engineers acting on behalf of BVH are either poorly documented, unavailable to TCC [Tauranga City Council] or, in some instances, are not in accordance with New Zealand standards.’’
The report was authored in part by AECOM geotechnical engineer Mike Trigger, who also penned a report to the New Zealand Geotechnical Society conference in 2017 highlighting issues in producer statements and NZ local authorities’ reliance on them.
Engineering NZ is also critical of councils’ reliance on them.
‘‘Regardless of the information provided by a producer statement author, the BCA [building consent authority] remains responsible for deciding if it is satisfied on reasonable grounds that any building work complies with the Building Act, the Building Code and approved building consent,’’ a spokeswoman said.
‘‘Territorial authorities are responsible for consenting designs and saying that a building is code compliant. Producer statements play a part in consenting processes, though they have no statutory status under the Building Act 2004.’’
An example of how producer statements can fail in a building process is that many of the Bella Vista Homes development properties are built on the wrong concrete foundations. Under the consented plans for Bella Vista Homes, the foundations of the houses were to be a RibRaft system. This system is covered by CodeMark – a voluntary product certification scheme – and must be poured by Firth Concrete. For many of the houses this did not happen. Bella Vista Homes director Danny Cancian said one of his subcontractors arranged the pour of the concrete and he had little involvement in that process.
‘‘I was told they could use another firm to pour the concrete if they used the same CodeMark as Firth,’’ Cancian said.
‘‘If that’s wrong, that’s on them.’’
A manager of one firm which supplied concrete used at Bella Vista said: ‘‘A Firth RibRaft CodeMark floor would technically require Firth concrete, even though the quality of other New Zealand-graded concrete suppliers would be of a comparable standard.’’
Therefore, even with producer statements saying the concrete is sound, and inspections and engineers signing off on the pour and foundations, that doesn’t change the fact it is not the floor specified by the plans and so technically the wrong foundation for many of the houses.
Despite this, Tauranga City Council inspectors signed off on foundations as poured.