The Simpli Centre of Excellence is committed to supporting and carrying out research that supports a high quality, safe and affordable built environment and improvements in efficiency and stability in the building regulatory system.
We have recently been a stakeholder and contributor to two pieces of important research, funded by BRANZ, that delves into the inner workings of our building regulatory framework to understand better how the system works and how it can be improved for both Building Consent Authorities and Consent Applicants.
Regulatory Barriers for Innovative Materials and Products
Accelerating Acceptance: identifying and reducing consent regulatory barriers to the adoption of material and product innovations, aims to identify what prohibits new and innovative products from entering the market.
The research initially focused on the complexities of the regulatory system, the perceived lack of consistency and how this may inhibit or slow down innovative products reaching the market. However, it became clear during research and interviews that many of the regulatory issues relating to new product innovations for the construction sector have their genesis in earlier stages of the product development lifecycle.
Increasing the adoption of new building materials and products is key to achieving Aotearoa New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions targets as well as improving productivity. However, using tried and tested materials and products is seen as a quicker and easier approach to gaining building consent. MBIE’s review of the Building Consent System (July 2022) noted that, in some cases, stakeholders felt there was an unreasonable level of scrutiny for new designs and methods. For larger designers and builders, this pattern is often repeated as they work with different building consent authorities (BCAs).
This project was led by Third Bearing, working with Simpli BCA members. With the aim of increasing the speed of consent, the project investigated ways to improve the acceptability of new materials and ultimately improve their viability for the building and construction industry. It sought to understand how to move new materials into common knowledge to reach a point of regulatory acceptance without needing additional requests for information.
With participation from nearly 30 BCAs, the project engaged with industry players who are developing new materials, products and systems. It also analysed consenting data and conducted a series of interviews with BCA officers and industry innovators.
Using these insights, researchers created guidance for BCAs, industry innovators and regulatory bodies to help improve the consenting process for new materials. By reducing barriers, it aims to increase the speed and volume of lower-carbon materials and methods being adopted by the industry to help support Aotearoa New Zealand’s climate change targets.
Click here to read the full report.
ModelDocs: Transforming Building Consenting Behaviour for Better Housing
ModelDocs seeks to understand the behaviour of those that participate in the building consent process in Aotearoa New Zealand, namely the Senders, those that prepare a consent application and those that process it, the receivers. The research hinged on the idea that out there, there was a perfect consent application. An application that was unambiguous, that required no further information that could be granted with certainty within the 20-day statutory timeframe and could be used as a guide to reducing the heavy toll, in time, money and wellbeing that persistent RFI’s (Requests for Information) and delays in the consent process are having on our building industry.
Over the past 20 years, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen the fastest growth in real house prices among OECD countries. Housing has shifted from being ‘abundant and reasonably affordable’ to ‘scarce and prohibitively expensive’.
It’s estimated that NZ will need 45,000-50,000 new homes in 2025. To speed up construction and reduce building costs in Aotearoa New Zealand, building consenting needs to be faster and more efficient.
ModelDocs: Transforming Building Consenting Behaviour’ analyses the behaviour between building consent applicants and Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) to understand the causes of delays and provide recommendations for improvement.
The research has been led by Professor Anthony Hoete and this team at Auckland University analysing residential consent data from Auckland and Tauranga city councils from May 2023 and working with a range of stakeholders in the building industry representing both senders and receivers including Simpli.
The research ultimately recommends better education of sender groups to reduce the number of missing documents from consent applications which could reduce the amount of RFI’s by an estimated 66%. It also recommended a new body to socialise and educate LBPs to ensure their knowledge is up to date and they are developing CPD as well as strengthening the existing complaint-based scheme.
It also recommended that receivers could become more consistent by sharing checklists and developing resources around writing RFI’s.
The research showed that commonly missed or incorrect information provided by senders is just as often due to entrenched behaviours towards old knowledge as it is not keeping up with changes to the building code and new technologies and materials. Consenting is a living process, and we must keep up with its ever-changing ecosystem to ensure not only an efficient system but that our building stock is continuously meeting the objectives of the Building Act.
Click here to read the full report.