Is petty rule enforcement driving builders from the industry?

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Those that have been building for more than 20 years will remember an industry that was more co-operative, less aggressive, less regimented and certainly far more satisfying to work in than today’s risk-averse, highly regulated and stifled environment.

So why has it gone this way, not only with the construction industry but in other areas of life as well?

We seem to have of lost sight of the real objectives, and have become a country of petty rule enforcers, creating jobs for clipboard Charlies getting job satisfaction out of enforcing minor misdemeanours. It seems that being an inspector of something has become a growth industry.

Let me explain further. In days gone by if you were planning a project you would visit and discuss it with the appropriate people at your local authority. You would work clearly on the best way to achieve the outcome, and collaboration would produce a reasonable outcome.

Then when the Resource Management Act came along, and leaky buildings prompted a tightening of the Building Act, local authorities no longer wanted to work collaboratively because they were more concerned about protecting themselves from liability, and collecting revenue.

What used to be how can we help make this project go ahead, has now become, inadvertently, how can we avoid the risk?

The only time I ever remember local authorities fully understanding the word service was when they had competition from building certifiers.

Consumers had a choice of where they wanted to get their building consent from. Council officers were so concerned about their jobs that they even used to come to your office to collect consent applications.

Unfortunately, the inability to get insurance finished the certifying scheme and returned us to the monopoly situation we now endure. It is probably time to revisit this and get some service back into the game.

Successive layers of compounding regulatory change is now reaching a tipping point, such that the system is becoming moribund with process and risk-averse behaviour.

Many local authorities are literally strangling progress on projects with excessive RFIs, inspections, re-inspections and regimented administration processes.

This behaviour is reluctantly understandable and, unfortunately, will never change until the law makers address the joint and several liability rules that make the last man standing responsible for every building fault, regardless of whether they caused them or not.

Everyone is looking to cover their backsides by pushing liability away, and increasing costs and loss of productivity is the result.

Australia has addressed the joint and several liability problem in the construction industry, and we should look closely at what we could adopt.

To make matters worse, many local authorities now have a new beast in the form of consent enforcement officers who prowl sites looking for something to catch you out on. Their very existence is, no doubt, measured by how many fines or prosecutions they can attain.

This, combined with over-zealous Worksafe inspectors, makes the life of a builder just that much more unpleasant. It is a hard industry to be in at the best of times, and with all these compounding factors it is not surprising that so many good builders are just getting out of it.

Some examples of where NZ has it wrong

In Britain and Australia, successful speed cameras are ones that don’t issue many tickets because they warn you a camera is coming up, and the objective of slowing the traffic is attained. Ignore those warnings and you deserve to be fined.

In New Zealand a successful speed camera is hidden in a sneaky spot, and its success is measured by how much revenue it collects. We have no idea what effect we are having on slowing the traffic, but we sure are making plenty of money on the way. If a camera stops delivering income it gets moved to a more lucrative spot.

Road fatalities are invariably blamed on the driver and speed, but there is rarely any mention of the road they were on, or its condition.

If we seriously want to bring our road toll down to comparable countries then build comparable roads. Ours are often unsafe, but the capital required to fix them is not  available.

Among many things, building inspectors are required to fixate on handrails and possible falls that a private resident might have within or around their own home.

However, that same resident is trusted to cross the busy road outside their home, walk along a waterfront with no handrail protection or drive a vehicle at 100km/h along a road without a median barrier! Where is the relativity in all of this?

Health and safety inspectors hound professional tradespeople who are proficient at working from heights as if they are incompetent to assess risk.

These inspectors’ actions are now putting DIY consumers at risk who do not have the same health and safety restraints, but now can’t afford to pay a professional to complete the work with the added cost of scaffolding.

They are now inadvertently forced into the risk of completing their own repairs, involving putting themselves at personal risk. And who knows what the quality of the repair work will be?

For a country of 4.5 million people we appear to be taking ourselves, and life, far too seriously. You only need to do a bit of travel to see the unfortunate way we are enforcing our rules compared to others.

The entrapment, fine and enforcement mentality we have perversely developed is unhealthy, and we need to have a serious rethink if we want innovation, productivity and an enjoyable, balanced work environment to return.

This article contains the author’s opinion only, and is not necessarily the opinion of the Registered Master Builders Association, its chief executive or staff.

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