Top result for our council building team

Our council's building team has received top marks for the way we carry out our business in our latest building accreditation audit.

We've just had the country's accreditation body International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) on site assessing our process for issuing building consents and making sure we meet the standards required as a registered Building Consent Authority (BCA).

IANZ had high praise for our team, who achieved the best result for a BCA since the new Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) rules were introduced in July 2017.

The auditors found our council had no serious non-compliances with the new standards. Just one general non-compliance was identified, but swiftly resolved on site.

The national average for general non-compliances for a council audit, under the new MBIE rules, is fifteen.

We also received four recommendations and eight advisory notes.

"You have strong procedures that are generally well defined. Inspection records are well maintained," the auditors said.

"The recommendation is that accreditation will continue."

Our Mayor Sandra Goudie says this is an exceptional result.

"Congratulations to all the building team, which includes the inspectors, the processors and customer services who help get requests through to the building team in a timely manner," Mayor Sandra says.

"To keep up with the significant increase in the number of consents being lodged and to produce an outstanding accreditation result is also down to the great people who work here."

The IANZ audit happens every two years. The process involves having an IANZ team of assessors and technical experts on site to make sure we do everything as we are supposed to when we process building consent applications, inspections and certifications.

The audit covers all steps in the process including customer service, record keeping, policies, procedures and the way we make and record decisions.

This year we also had MBIE on site to observe the audit.

Our council's regulatory services group manager Barry Smedts says this is easily the best result in the country since the new regime has been in place.

"Maintaining building accreditation is one of our key activities and this result demonstrates that what we are doing is at the highest level," Mr Smedts says.

"Council building control teams often get a lot of flak, but to get such a clean record on compliance is a credit to everyone in the team."

The next assessment is in 2020.

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