Restricted Building Work

Restricted building work can only be carried out or supervised by a licensed professional with the relevant licence class. LBP (Licensed Building Practitioners).

The licence classes are:

• design
• carpentry
• roofing
• external plastering
• bricklaying or blocklaying
• foundations
• site.

Registered architects and chartered professional engineers are automatically treated as design LBPs.

Licensed or certified plumbers or gasfitters are automatically treated as licensed for certain work (to recognise they fit, seal or flash pipework through exterior walls and do some roofing and cladding in the ordinary course of their work).

Sometimes, trade classes overlap. For example, a person licensed in the carpentry class may also carry out or supervise:

• construction of concrete foundations, pile foundations, or both
• installation of lightweight profiled metal roofing.

You must complete a Certificate of Design Work (CoW) and include it in your building consent application. The CoW must be supplied by an LBP who has designed or supervised the design of the restricted building work.

Where more than one LBP is involved with the design of your building work then

• the supervising LBP is responsible for the design and the COW where the work is under supervision of another LBP
• each LBP needs to supply a COW for their part of the design that is restricted building work.

It is your responsibility as the homeowner to check that the people you are using to do your restricted building work have the relevant licence.

LBPs can only complete restricted building work that they are licensed to carry out. For example, a licensed roofer cannot complete bricklaying or foundational work. It is important that you check with them that they have the relevant licence before you start your work.

If the LBP and the homeowner do not fulfil their restricted building work requirements, we may stop the work by issuing a ‘Notice to fix’ or a warning. If the work is not carried out by, or done under the supervision of a LBP, both parties could be fined up to $20,000.

An owner-builder exemption may be an option if you are intending to carry out restricted building work on your own home.

You would be responsible for ensuring that restricted building work carried out under the owner-builder exemption complies with the building consent and the relevant plans and specifications.

You are an owner-builder if you:

• Live in or are going to live in the home (this can include a beach or holiday home).
• Carry out the restricted building work to your own home yourself, or with the help of your unpaid friends and family members.
• Have not, under the owner-builder exemption, carried out restricted building work to any other home within the previous three years.

Owner-builders must provide a statutory declaration with their building consent application. Please refer to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's website for more information on the requirements for owner-builder exemptions.