Building work in good hands

If you’re building a dwelling in the Hurunui district, you can be assured that we strive to ensure the building approval process from Hurunui District Council (HDC) will be a robust and fair one.

The Building Inspectors and Consents Team at HDC has recently been reaccredited as a Building Consent Authority (BCA) under International Accreditation New Zealand, (IANZ).

The first accreditation was achieved in 2007, and has been maintained ever since.

The main team member at HDC putting in the hard yards to achieve this benchmark has been Milly Perkins, who has been in the fold for just more than a year.

Prior to this, she completed a Bachelor of Building Science at Victoria University in Wellington.

She said being the BCA administrator for this accreditation has been a great learning curve and enjoyable.

“I found the IANZ assessors were very thorough and fair, and I learned a lot about the regulation process.”

The Team is assessed against 18 legal requirements around technical skills and qualifications of staff, quality of work, compliance with procedures and timeframes of processors and consents.

In addition, 12 monthly assessments of Building Officers are carried out by IANZ.

“IANZ require us to tick every box, cross every t and dot every i. It’s a balance of achieving customer experience, while complying with the very stringent requirements.”

Under IANZ rules, to be a Building Officer or Inspector there is now a requirement for a Level 6 qualification in a building related field; for example a Diploma in Building Surveying, or a Bachelor of Building Science.

PHOTO: Milly Perkins with Kerry Walsh, Team Leader Building Controls.