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The towering rate of failures for building inspections in the Mackenzie district is due to a range of issues rather than builders not being good with their tools, a leading industry expert says.
The number of properties failing building inspections made headlines after a Mackenzie District Council report showed almost 80%, 117 out of 151, of building inspections failed.
Council building control officer Mark Mitchell told councillors the failures stemmed from several, including the complexity of some projects.
“Tekapo have some reasonably complicated framing designs,” Mr Mitchell said.
However, Building Officials Institute of New Zealand president Karel Boakes said the country’s national building inspection failure rate was higher than many would expect, sitting between 45% and 55%, or one in two properties.
"In New Zealand, we have a bit of a problem,” Ms Boakes said.
She said the high rate of failure was not due to a lack of building skills, but instead came down to planning, supervision, control of job sites, and developer interference.
“There’s a lot of small companies … [that] lack the business skills in terms of building, and that means they potentially have a lack of planning and organisation of the sites and the jobs and the projects that they have,” she said.
“That leads to them not being ready for inspections.”
Ms Boakes said contractual relationships caused a pressure point for builders, as much of the planning, inspections, and project expectations were unrealistic.
Inspections were booked outside builders’ control, despite them being the ones who knew the most about the build and its logistics.
“You’ve got developers changing things on site, as it happens, and builders are kind of obligated to just do that and then waiting on failed inspections,” she said
“There’s a lot more builders out there building than there are licensed building practitioners [LBPs] … they’re stretched pretty thin when they’re having to do supervision of sites.”
Another driver of failure rates, and one she believed needed to change, was the understanding of the Building Act 2004.
“[Builders] may be LBP licensed, others may not be but they’ve generally done some sort of training.
"I would suggest it’s still not enough,” she said.
“Where you’ve got the developers or project managers that they’ve brought in … that skill level or understanding of the legislation is not there.”
She said there should be responsibilities under the Act for developers and project managers, as there were for owners, builders, and designers.
-- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ on Air