Auckland Council is upping the ante, cracking down on shoddy builders inundated with work, as housing construction in Auckland continues to boom.
It has released videos showing recent examples of poor building practises it claims are rife in Auckland.
The Council says it’s also shutting down about two sites a week because of dangerous excavation work, while it’s failing up to a third of all building inspections.
Its general manager of Building Control Ian McCormick says, “As the building boom gathers pace, tradespeople with greatly varying levels of skill have flooded into the industry and some supervisors are taking on more jobs than they can effectively handle.
“The problem is increasing as the city intensifies and more challenging in-fill housing sites suddenly become worth building on.”
Concern about shoddy building work has resulted in the council appointing a full-time investigator to look into examples of substandard work and, where necessary, lay complaints with professional licensing bodies.
The council’s building inspection team is working closely with industry groups such as Registered Master Builders and Certified Builders.
“We are working together at the moment and looking at designing some type of simple quality assurance tools that builders can use to make it easier for them to manage different sub-trades working on a site,” says McCormick.
“The quality tools would involve someone signing off the key structural elements and milestones of the build, providing them with a simple system they can use to ensure the work has been checked off as compliant with the approved plans before the inspector arrives. This will mean less re-work, and less need for regulatory intervention.
“We are also working with central government on how we can provide real incentives for those practitioners with robust quality systems in place.
“We believe maintaining quality needs to be an industry-wide focus.”
For me on the issue see this Double Shot interview interest.co.nz did with McCormick in August.
33 Comments
Nice bit of propaganda by the council.
They're basically saying "Don't get rid of us and our expensive, slow, redundant procedures or else this sort of stuff will happen!
Which of course is a nonsense. Just look at how so many other industries police themselves, with a governing body overseeing them.
Propaganda?? Come on man, anyone with connections to construction in Auckland know how shite many of the new builds are. I'm hearing some horror stories from my mates in trades.
Take your political hat off chap - this needs to be sorted so the same mistakes aren't repeated.
.....alternatively council pull out altogether, leave it to private firms. Basically, if you haven't had your build supervised and signed off by a reputable company, then your spec build is worth less accordingly. Let the market prevail, buyer beware. If you want to pay top dollar, get the gold plated sign off, want a cheap build, get the home that has no paper work. Gives real meaning to affordable homes eh!
Yep - Mate does work in the new Long Bay & Millwater subdivisions, horror stories abound on sections built by "price is right" developers.
My favourite example: Drainage pipes not meeting, off by a meter or so. Oops. The fix: S-pipe and shitloads of duct tape. He got offered 10k to look the other way by these guys who think they're still operating in their mother country.
Frightening - deja-vu - do they get pink-stickered?
amazing what you can cover up with acryllic render
Here's another video from Auckland City Council of a group of town-houses
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11528352
appropos leaky homes - what will happen to them
were they spec-built homes by spec builders
or
were they custom-built homes to customer specification
If a customer requested build the owner must be mighty un-happy
I'm guessing they are a spec-build by a spec-builder
pity the poor end-purchasers, unless the business folds, leaving a lot of unhappy creditors
So the leaders in Wellington sing the praises of how many consents are issued
They never reveal how many completions actually pass muster and get finalised
The question that isn't answered is what happens to them? - are they pink-stickered?
The "leaky home" debacle was caused by a combination of James Hardie and their monolithic cladding systems and Carters with their untreated Pine. Reliance on silicon as a flashing. And the council saying it was sweet as.
That blockwork was not laid by anyone with local training. I bet the price was right but.
Just drive around building sites out east on a Sunday, the "skilled tradesmen" are all on site then.
The councils had no choice. The building materials and methods you mention were all approved by the Building Industry Authority (now Ministry of Business, Innovation etc).
Once the government had approved those materials and methods any council not consenting the use of them lay themselves open to litigation.
That film of the foundation identifies a potential failing in the building code (as well as shoddy work).
If you use 200 series blocks for a foundation wall (for a suspended timber floor structure), then on top of that leave 100mm for a 70 series brick veneer and set a 90x45 bottom plate (for the floor joists) on the internal side, there is only going to be 40mm to the outside edge of the concrete block or about 10mm to the edge of the infill, so if there is not much bond between the blocks and the infill, it's no surprise that there is going to be shear failure in the blocks given that concrete has only about 3MPa tensile strength.
The other thing is that it looks like the 200 series was sitting on a 150 series course of blocks (there was an overhang). Surely these are all design issues that should have been picked up at the consenting stage.
Admittedly that workmanship was appalling, but there seems to be an underlying design issue as well.
The question here is that if those dynabolts failed just with tightening, what hope have they of resisting lateral forces in a major earthquake or tornado?
The obvious solution here is to cast the fixings in the concrete, so that they are not only in the right place but won't stress the concrete while it is still curing. In this case dynabolts simply weren't the right fixing for the job.
Admittedly that workmanship was "appealing" so you are getting these guys to do all your work from now on?
;]
spell checkers are great arnt they....
"The obvious solution here is to cast the fixings in the concrete" which is my preference and in fact what I have seen mostly done. a) its cheap, b) its properly tied in.
The fastenings should have been cemented in not drilled in afterwards. Would be very interested to know if this construction was undertaken by NZ trained builders who have been through a local apprenticeship and are legally licensed building practitioners. How did the house get so far advanced and why wasn't the initial dodgy work picked up earlier. They will never be able to lay the bricks straight on that rebate.The entire construction should be pulled down and start again. Should not be too difficult to locate this site - motorway noise in the background - may be visible from the North western motorway.
My house was built in 1997, Cedar top and mono bottom but I got lucky with most of it due to the design with eaves and window flashings and a roof that doesn't leak. Still its a bit of a mess if you crawl under it and look at the foundations, wouldn't pass then and it wouldn't pass now but I see the same thing is still happening nearly 20 years later, nothing changes in this country I'm afraid, you can put all the rules and "Checks" in place you like but the quality of the builders is just not there and it appears to be getting even worse.
Some of this type of work may be being done by non NZ trained contractors.
A neighbour to one of our rentals (part of same cross lease) had their insurer rebuild a totally collapsed (earthquake damaged) block wall. It was rebuilt without ANY reinforcing which is illegal under the building code (I took photos), the contractors did not speak a word of English (they were Eastern European) I tried to communicate with them but they didn't understand, I spoke with their boss, he claimed it was a like for like repair.
How can we let such construction practices go on? The wall fell over in the December 2011 aftershock. Rebuilding it identically with the same blocks just means it will just fall over again at some stage, maybe killing someone.
I contacted the CCC at the time and nothing came of it. I contacted the elderly owner and suggested she query it with her insurer. Nothing came of it.
What can you do?
Nothing. Just that potentially children will die at some point in the future because earthquake damaged walls which weren't repaired to the building code collapse in another event.
What a great society we have...
Prior to the framing issues, this house would have failed its foundation inspection, so where was the council inspection at this point? IE how come it was this far into the build before these out of level foundations issues etc. were picked up?
Only 1/2 the story is being told here.
The physical results we see here are symptomatic of what is a systemic failure in the building industry starting from Central Govt. down.
Good on that inspector for highlighting this, but the house wasn't that far away from being closed in. A little bit of render would have hidden the problem in the short term and the poor unsuspecting homeowner would have been non the wiser.
This goes right back to abolition of the Apprentice Training Scheme, to how the Govt. first ignored the fore warnings about Leaking Home Syndrome, to then sidestepping of any responsibility for the resulting leaking homes.
Also to the way both Central and Local Govt.s create artificial shortages of supply than mean total housing costs are first captured by land bankers and then by council costs, leaving what's left between these costs and market value to build a house, which is not much.
For the price we pay for housing in NZ compared to other jurisdictions we should have the best quality housing in the world.
Even in countries that have the same high medium income to house price multiples as we do, like Canada, the quality of their housing in twice ours.
There is more regulation than there has ever been, but is the problem getting better or worse. Not that no regulation is the answer, but what is needed is the right amount of the right regulation.
question
When a consent is issued - who is it issued to?
Is the builder who is to do the job nominated on the consent? or is it issued to the owner without reference to who will do the actual construction?
I thought only registered LBP's could do the work - easy enough to cross reference
Totally agree on the Apprentice issue. Personally I think the almighty dollar and speed takes precedence over quality work in most situations. Buyer beware of the lowest quote.
Cost of housing is down to the monopolies of Fletchers and Carter Holt. Liberal smear campaigns and apparent "non compliance" of imported (cheaper) material. Its been going on for 30 plus years.
Regulation wise, it needs to happen at Industry organisation level (master builders etc..). And policed there too. By the time the council/govt get involved the horse has bolted and they make a video.
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