Guidance on the acceptance of producer statements

Producer statements remain in wide use for helping establish compliance with the Building Act and Building Code, despite having no specific status under the Building Act 2004.  So it is important that anyone accepting these statements can be confident of their reliability.

Under the Building Act 1991, producer statements were a defined means of helping provide evidence of compliance with the Building Code. However, over-reliance on these statements without sufficient scrutiny of the author or accuracy of the contents meant that many decisions based on them were not robust. The Hunn Report on the Weathertightness of Buildings, and technical reviews and determinations conducted by the Department, have been critical of this over-reliance without robust systems.

Producer statements are not specifically referred to in the Building Act 2004. However, they can still be considered as part of the building consent process, in terms of giving a building consent authority reasonable grounds to be satisfied that the specified building work complies with the Building Code.

The Department is developing a guidance document to advise on the use of producer statements. The authenticity of information in a producer statement must also be assured as part of risk management when deciding whether to issue code compliance certificates (CCCs).

Producer statements often cover an extensive range of building activity - insulation installation, external plastering, plumbing and drainage, alarm installations, structural design and construction work and so on. These statements may be written by a wide range of practitioners, from specialist tradespeople to professional engineers and architects, or from a variety of other building trades and professions, depending on the nature of the work covered.

The statements also cover work relating to a variety of different building control situations, such as those associated with design proposals and design reviews, and those made by practitioners who have constructed, installed or inspected completed building work.

The consideration given to producer statements by building consent authorities as part of compliance checks is discretionary. Each must decide whether to consider them and how much weight, if any, a producer statement will be given in the certification processes. Requirements for consideration need to be documented in policies and procedures, with decisions well recorded and justified as part of the building consent authority's documentation for processing and approving building consent applications and issuing CCCs.

In their consideration, building consent authorities must be confident that statements' authors have appropriate experience and competence in their field(s).

Based on findings of determinations and technical reviews conducted, and on requirements for accreditation, the Department recommends that building consent authorities' formal policy and procedures for assessing and considering producer statements should include:

• the form and content of each producer statement and requirements for supporting documentation
• decision-making on producer statement acceptance - ie, ensuring they contain adequate and specific detail when deciding what weight to give them, and the decision-making audit process
• matters, if applicable, such as compliance with the Building Code's durability provisions and how any assumptions made in a producer statement will be validated on site (eg, assumed soil conditions).

The policy should also specify how the authors' competence, experience and fields of practice are assessed - for example, via statutory and publicly accessible registers such as those of chartered professional engineers, registered architects or electrical workers.

Membership of a professional or trade group is not, in itself, proof of competence in relation to a specific producer statement or discipline of work, so further checking may be needed for a building consent authority to be satisfied that it is fulfilling its obligations to establish compliance on reasonable grounds.

In practice, most building consent authorities will already keep information about local and producer statement authors, so they can easily and regularly consider their statements.

Further guidance and information for building consent authorities about the use of producer statements is available in the Building Consent Authority Development Guides and the Building Consent Authority Accreditation Preparation and Self-assessment Guide, all of which are available online at http://www.dbh.govt.nz/pub-bca-accreditation