Licensed Building Practitioners
- Licensing for specific roles and skills in the construction process has been mandatory from 1st March 2012.
- The scheme is one of the reforms of the Building Act 2004 which ensures that homes and buildings are designed and built right the first time.
- This will be a permanent part of the future construction industry, and the scheme is designed to lift skills and productivity and set the benchmark for best practice.
- Licensing has been revised several times and the latest announcement on the final shape of the scheme now focuses on licensed skills for stand-alone houses and small to medium-sized apartment buildings.
- Only Licensed Builders are authorised to undertake Restricted Building Work (see here for more information).
These recently amended Government rules state that in the future several parties to a building contract must have a special licence to be eligible to work on a site or be involved in the site supervision or design process of Restricted Building Work – restricted work is work requiring a Building Consent.
The areas of responsibility needing to have a licence are:
- Designer
- Foreman/site supervisor/project manager (called Site Lead)
Trade Skills Including:
- Carpenter
- Brick & Blocklaying
- External plastering
- Roofer
Licensing classes for Concrete Structure, Steel Structure, and Foundation were going to be introduced in early 2010 but this has not yet happened.
In all cases, one licence per skill per project is to be identified on the building consent document & the process for that and the site monitoring is part of the Building Consent Authorities’ (Councils) statutory role. If you want to know whether your builder is a Licensed Building Practitioner there is an on-line public register with details of their licensing classes and this can be found here.
As of December 2012 there are estimated to be over 22,000 LBPs. This brings key construction roles in line with other statutory registration skills like electricians, plumbers, gasfitters, engineers and architects.
The various trade and skill roles that require a license, as outlined earlier, each have an exact definition and these are on the DBH web site as well as the licensing documentation.