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On April 7th the government passed the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Act. The legislative changes included in the Act aim to reduce barriers to high-quality products and materials entering the New Zealand market, increase choice of building products and mitigate the supply chain disruptions and price escalations in recent years.
The Commerce Commission’s market study into residential building supplies found that competition for the supply and acquisition of key building supplies is not working as well as it could. These barriers result in high prices, limited choice of building products, and low confidence in the performance of existing products. The Commerce Commission made nine recommendations to improve competition for building supplies including that the building regulatory system needed to create clear compliance pathways for more key building supplies and make it easier for designers and market participants to use new or competing products.
The bill creates several new pathways for the approval of overseas building products or building products tested to overseas standards or schemes.
Building Product Specifications
The first of these is the Building Product Specifications (BPS), a new compliance document that came into effect on the 28th of July 2025. This document will hold all the building product specifications and standards that products can be manufactured or tested to in order to comply with the acceptable solutions and verification methods.
The Building Product Specifications:
- Provide more choice of building products for use in Building Code-compliant work
- Incorporate a wider range of New Zealand and international standards into existing building compliance pathways
- Make it easier and faster to add, update and modify building product standards in the Building Code system
Importantly, the BPS cannot be used in isolation as a compliance method. Any standards referenced in the BPS will include the relevant product specification information, while the acceptable solutions and verification methods, may cite the BPS and will outline how the product can be used in building work to comply with the building code. Products specified must be used within the scope and limitations of not only the standard they are manufactured or tested to but also the relevant acceptable solution or verification method.
The BPS contains specifications for building products in relation to their manufacture, fabrication, testing, quality control, physical properties, performance, installation, and/or maintenance.
The BPS, with its inclusion of more equivalent international standards that products may be manufactured and tested to, will reduce the burden on specifiers to determine whether an international standard aligns with New Zealand Standards and meets requirements for compliance as they currently would when using the standard as a part of an alternative solution, helping designers, product manufacturers, and building consent authorities determine the equivalency of overseas standards and reducing reliance on familiar products.
Approved Products Certified Overseas
Currently CodeMark is the only product certification scheme that certifies that a building product or method meets the requirements of the Building Code and must be accepted by a Building Consenting Authority as a deemed to comply compliance pathway under Section 19 of the Act. Under the new regulations the Chief Executive of MBIE will have the power to recognise certified building products or methods, certified under an overseas product certification scheme that meet set criteria.
Products or methods that have been evaluated as meeting criteria set out in the regulations will be recognised with Recognition Notice’s published by MBIE under Gazette Notice and available on their website. A recognition notice will include any relevant limitations and conditions on the use of the product or method to comply with the Building Code.
Product specifiers and building consent officials must ensure products and methods are used within their intended scope, comply with any conditions or limitations of the Recognition Notice, and check that the notice is current. The BCA will assess a product or method with a recognition notice in a similar manner to how they assess a CodeMark Certificate and will require information to ensure it is being use in accordance with its notice as a part of a building consent application.
MBIE have indicated that the Chief Executive will recognise products certified under Australia’s Watermark Certification scheme initially, opening up the Aotearoa New Zealand market to more plumbing products already approved for use in Australia. Recognition notices for the first of these products may be used from 1 October 2025.
Endorsed Standards
Another proposal is for the Minister for Building and Construction to use a set of criteria to recognise groups of overseas standards and standard certification schemes. This will mean that any building product that meets a recognised international standard from a group of standards (e.g. International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) etc.) or recognised standards certification scheme (such as Underwriters Lab (UL Mark), International Code Council Evaluation Services (ICC-ES mark) or Intertek certified building products) can be used and specified by designers builders as supporting evidence of compliance with the Building Code.
Products used via this pathway, however, are not deemed to comply and will still be accepted via an alternative solution pathway. BCAs will still need to assess the compliance of the proposed products and building work with the building code and may use their testing or certification to overseas endorsed standards and schemes as supporting evidence of compliance with the New Zealand Building Code.
Benefits of making it easier to use more overseas building products
Under the existing compliance pathways, to specify and use building products tested to overseas standards or certified under international schemes is via an alternative solution and generally puts a high burden of proof on the specifier and manufacturer to ensure that enough information is provided to the building consent authority to demonstrate that the product has been tested to the equivalent requirements in the New Zealand building code. This often leads designers and builders to revert to local, familiar products that are more easily accepted by building consent authorities, rather than attempting to meet the high threshold required for overseas products, when the building consent authority is not guaranteed to accept the product as compliant.
By creating compliance pathways for overseas products that demonstrate equivalence to New Zealand Standards or compliance with the Building Code via select criteria it is likely acceptance of these products will increase. Specifiers will have to provide less compliance information upfront, and if the products fall within deemed to comply pathways (such as have recognition notices), building consent authorities must accept them. Consenting authorities can now be confident that products certified under overseas schemes or tested to overseas standards, recognised under these regulations, are compliant with the Building Code, given MBIE has undertaken the assessment on their behalf. Consenting Authorities, however, will still need to check that the products are being used as intended and within their approved scope.
For designers and specifiers, this means less time spent gathering evidence to demonstrate compliance of products and for building consent authorities, less time reviewing and make decisions on overseas and innovative products tested and manufactured to these standards and schemes. This should overall make the system more efficient giving all participants more confidence to use a wider range of products and addressing some of the existing barriers to expanding the construction material market.
Available Product and Standards Information
Manufacturers and importers of Building Products will need to be aware that all products are subject to the Building Product Information Requirements and as such any international standards and schemes that the products have been tested to will need to be cited as a part of these requirements. It is also a requirement under the Building Product Information Requirements to provide the scope and limitations of the use of any building product. This will be especially important for international products where specifiers and building consent officers may be less familiar with the product and its intended use.
The Building Product Specifications does not include the scope and limitations of the individual international standards cited and these standards are not freely accessible in New Zealand, making verification more difficult. MBIE has made it clear in its guidance that Building Consent Authorities are still expected to assess that products are being used within their intended use and the scope and limitations of their testing or certification, as they currently do for those products with CodeMark Certificates or tested to New Zealand Standards. This may be difficult where the standards or product certificates are international and not easily available and manufacturers, importers and specifiers should be prepared to provide this information, along with the product information when applying for building consent. This will avoid any unnecessary Requests for Information (RFI’s) and ensure Building Consent Authorities have all the necessary information to ensure products are being used for their stated purpose and that they will comply with the requirements of the Building Code.
Building Code Update 2025
Alongside the release of the BPS, all Acceptable Solutions and Verification Methods referencing its first edition have also been updated to cite the BPS. The updates also include updating these documents to the new formatting and minor changes to the documents to align them with other recent changes.
You can see the full scope of changes and review the new AS and VM documents on MBIE’s website.