Restricted Building Work and Licensed Building Practioners

Homeowners who are about to begin a building project need to be aware of changes to the Building Act, which take affect from 1 March 2012. This Build It Right brochure lays out the requirements in an easy to understand way.

To ensure any structural or weathertight work on a property is carried out by competent professionals, there will be restrictions in place on who can design, build and renovate homes.  This is known asRBW_LBP_Brox.jpg Restricted Building Work or RBW.

RBW only relates to residential construction, alterations and design of houses and small-to-medium sized apartment buildings. It doesn’t apply to any ancillary buildings such garages or garden sheds or to commercial property.

The type of work which will be restricted includes: 


In order to get building consent for Restricted Building Work, the design will need to be carried out or supervised by a Design LBP, a Chartered Professional Engineer or a Registered Architect.

They will then need to provide the owner with a Certificate of Work memorandum  that states who did the design, identifies the restricted work, and certifies that the design complies with the Building Code. The homeowner (or LBP) must provide this to the local council as part of their building consent application.

Restricted Building Work construction cannot get underway until the owner has notified the local council of the LBPs who will be carrying out or supervising the work and the building work carried out by a Licensed Building Practioner or supervised by one.

During Construction, as each LBP has completes their part of RBW (eg the Roofing LBP has put the roof on), they must give the owner a Record of Work memorandum stating that they have carried out or supervised that part of construction. The homeowner must in turn provide this to the local council as part of their Code Compliance Certificate application.

Homeowners have an obligation to ensure that those they employ are licensed to do the work required. They can risk being fined up to $20,000 if they are found to have knowingly employed an unlicensed person to carry out Restricted Building Work. Likewise, unlicensed trades people who carry out and/or supervise restricted building work can also be fined. 

For further information about Licensed Building Practitioners or Restricted Building Work, please visit www.dbh.govt.nz/lbp 

* The Licensed Building Practitioner scheme, administered by the Department of Building and Housing, covers designers, carpenters, brick and block layers, foundation specialists, site managers, plasters and roofers. LBPs are practitioners who have demonstrated to the Department that they have the knowledge, skills and experience to carry out quality building work to a high standard.

 

Owner Occupier

If you want to build your own house and you are not a licensed builder you are actually allowed to but you have to do the work yourself or use friends or family who are not paid and you are not allowed to have done this anytime in the previous three years. If you do use a licensed professional for something like roofing, then from our reading of the rules it would appear that you will need to use a licensed builder for all the work.

For more information, check out the Dept. of Building & Housing website here...