Nick Smith: Take commerce out of the code

The Government's clumsy response to the leaky homes crisis has failed to address the most important regulatory system in our building industry - that of Standards New Zealand.

This organisation was established after the 1931 Napier earthquake as a key component of New Zealand's national building code. For more than 50 years it provided high quality standards documents that underpinned a successful, vibrant building industry.

Standards New Zealand got caught up in the rush of state sector reforms at the height of Rogernomics. State funding ceased and it was reformed in 1988 into a trading entity. Unlike its sister organisations in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, Standards New Zealand became solely dependent on the sale of its standards documents for survival.

The cost of standards has soared. Advertising has been introduced into the documents. Most significantly, it no longer has the funding to employ independent technical expertise to review and update standards.

State departments like the Ministry of Works, that used to contribute independent expertise for technical committees, were abolished as part of the reforms of that period. The objective of producing high quality standards that served the public good has become secondary to the objective of being commercially successful.

A good example is the decisions made by Standards New Zealand in reviewing standards.

When queried by a professional engineer on why a standard was being revised so often while other standards in much greater need of revision were ignored, he was told by Standards New Zealand that updates of that particular standard, and the seminars that accompanied revisions, were highly profitable.

The public interest is not being well served by this culture.

The high cost of the New Zealand standards is also creating false economies. A typical standard such as NZS3604 for timber-framed buildings used to cost $20 but now costs $250. Designers, builders and apprentices used to all have handy copies of these standards. Today they are just too expensive. The result is less accessibility to the standards and fewer people knowing them.

My greatest concern is the way commercial interests have come to dominate the standards setting process. The decision in 1995 to remove the requirement for pinus radiata framing timber to be boron treated has had enormous implications for thousands of homeowners and has received insufficient scrutiny.

The drivers for this change were the timber industry. The Standards Committee that approved the change was totally industry dominated. There was no consumer representative.

The strong views of the Forest Research Institute questioning the decision were ignored. This fatal decision has added billions to the repair cost of leaky homes today.

Standards New Zealand has never offered an apology nor accepted that its failure to ensure independent advice on its technical committees has contributed to the misery of so many homeowners.

The latest machinations over timber treatment indicate Standards New Zealand has learnt nothing. Last December, amendments that will lower the timber treatment standard were proposed and referred to a technical committee. These committees are meant to make decisions on a consensus basis or, in unusual circumstances, an 80 per cent majority. A vote in May saw two members reject the lesser standard. In June the two members were sacked to allow a unanimous vote in August. The lesser standard was subsequently adopted by Standards New Zealand.

It is significant that the Department of Building and Housing has refused to accept the new standard. They, too, are realising that all is not well at Standards New Zealand.

However, as Certified Builders angrily noted last week, builders now have Standards New Zealand saying one thing and the Department of Building and Housing saying another.

This is not the only building standard that has gone astray. There are significant concerns over structural, plumbing, cladding and foundation standards. Many standards are long overdue for revision. New Zealand is falling behind by not having standards that ensure our buildings use the latest technology and meet the needs of society today.

I do not blame Standards New Zealand entirely for this parlous state of affairs. The framework in which it works puts the focus on commercial objectives, not the public good. The tragedy is that the Government has ignored the problems with Standards New Zealand and been sidetracked into all sorts of ill thought through responses to the leaky home crisis. It has imposed huge additional regulatory requirements on councils who in turn have made getting a building consent slow, bureaucratic and expensive.

It has passed laws banning the DIY builder and introduced a complex building licensing system that will add still more compliance costs. It has overridden the long established Standards New Zealand system with a complex array of edicts from the Department of Building and Housing.

The way forward is to restore integrity back into the Standards New Zealand process. The days of expecting volunteers to develop standards are over. We need competent technical experts on the standards committees who are there to serve the public.

We need to develop a programme for systematically reviewing all building standards to ensure they represent best practice. We then need to make these standards far more accessible to the public and building sector.

The sensible way to fund this exercise is the building levy charged on all building consents.

Spending this money on a robust system of sound building standards through the Standards New Zealand system will deliver better outcomes than the bloated new Department of Building and Housing.

New Zealanders' homes are their castles. We need to ensure they are built on sound foundations. A reformed system of building standards is the reinforcing steel for that foundation.

* Nick Smith is MP for Nelson and National Party spokesman on building and construction. He has an honours degree and a doctorate of philosophy in civil engineering and has worked in the bridge construction industry.