Queenstown’s Standards bearer

Peter Laurenson. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER
Peter Laurenson. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER
A Queenstowner's bringing his extensive building industry knowledge to the independent body overseeing the adoption and revision of New Zealand standards across the board.

Pete Laurenson’s been appointed to the seven-member Standards Approval Board by Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Andrew Bayly, replacing a member with a similar industry background.

Laurenson’s career’s involved very different roles in the industry.

For 20-plus years he supplied building materials through John Edmond, moving up the ranks in Dunedin, Invercargill, Auckland and then Queenstown in the late 1990s.

He then headed up Queenstown’s council building department, initially through contractor CivicCorp, then Lakes Environmental, before it returned in-house.

After that, he had a role at Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in Wellington, looking after the building code and the accreditation of building consent authorities.

Subsequently, Laurenson headed up the Auckland city council’s building consents department, overseeing almost 560 staff.

Two years ago, he became general manager of Queenstown development company/contractor Scope Resources.

"The interesting thing is I’m not so much working in the industry as I was, but I’ve still got so much interest in it, that’s why I took the [Standards] role on."

Till last year, he was also on the Building Officials Institute of NZ for 13 years, the last four years as president.

The Standards board’s role, he says, is to oversee the development and revision of standards through selecting wide-ranging committees, including their chairs, to do the work, and then they approve their work or not.

Laurenson’s term runs till September 2027.

 

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