Council Supports Building Industry Training
Friday, 23 July 2010
Horowhenua District Council is supporting builders to encourage them to meet new regulations under the Building Act by March 2012. After this date they will need a practitioner license for most kinds of building work under the Licensed Building Practitioners (LBP) Scheme.
“We are the first in the country to help local builders meet the new standards by holding a series of lunchtime seminars to get them licensed,” Council’s Senior Building Control Officer Colin Gibbs says.
In March this year, Colin and the Council’s building team streamlined those with existing qualifications through the new licenses. The July seminars will be for those without existing trade qualifications.
“We’ve prepared a comprehensive programme which will allow candidates to become licensed in two particular areas of the building trade - Carpentry and Site (supervision),” Colin says.
The license classes introduced under the new scheme are: Design; Bricklaying and block laying; External plastering; Foundations; Roofing; Site (supervision) and Carpentry.
The scheme is one of the changes in the Building Act 2004 to encourage better building design and construction so that the public can have confidence that licensed building practitioners working on their homes and buildings are competent, and that homes and buildings are designed and built right the first time.
Licensing promotes, recognises and supports professional skills and behaviour in the building industry. Over time, the emphasis on education and training, along with better career pathways, will increase. From 2015 it is proposed that licensing will be qualifications-based. In the meantime, the scheme is competency-based. Competent builders and tradespeople with a good track record can have their skills and knowledge formally recognised, whether they are trade-qualified or not. A number of people without formal trade qualifications have already been assessed as competent and have their licences.
An owner-builder (or do-it-yourself) exemption to the Licensed Building Practitioner Scheme will take effect on 1 March 2012, the same date from which restricted building work requirements will apply.
The exemption means DIYers will be able to undertake restricted building work on their homes provided they meet certain conditions, including that the DIYer:
- is an individual (not a company or trust)
- has a legal, beneficial or equitable interest in the land
- carries out the work themselves or with a close friend or relative
- completes statutory declarations that they meet these conditions
The declarations will be kept on Council property files. This will enable a prospective purchaser of the property to choose whether to buy a DIY home. If restricted building work on the house subsequently proved to be defective, the purchaser would be able to take the matter up with the DIYer.
Those involved in construction who don’t require licences under the scheme are painters, tilers and plasterboard stoppers.
Horowhenua residential builders, designers and those involved in erecting steel framed buildings now have time to prepare themselves for the licensing scheme with the help of the Council building team’s lunchtime seminars.
Builders interested in attending a series of lunchtime seminars should contact Colin Gibbs at Horowhenua District Council on 06 366 0999 ext 6816.