Our building and construction market has product standards and building codes to cover off on design and fabrication requirements to meet our very specific New Zealand requirements, such as seismic conditions, durability and personal safety objectives. While international standards are used where practicable, for many product application AS/NZS standard requirements need to be met which are often different to the country of manufacture and often need additional resources to be made compliant to New Zealand needs.
Objective of draft policy
Responding to the reinforcing steel mesh conformance issue recently highlighted in the media, HERA is driving a policy change that allows our members to deliver better value and remain competitive. The objective of this policy is to have a steel construction industry-endorsed policy statement on the quality assurance framework for ‘critical use’ products used in building and construction, which can be agreed on and used for advocacy purposes.
With the rapid adoption of the Steel Fabrication Certification (SFC) scheme, our New Zealand steel construction industry has significantly progressed on its way to verifiable product conformance.
We see this proposal as a key opportunity for you to remain competitive – not only against imports, but also local competing building systems. We realise a comprehensive quality assurance system works only if all New Zealand stakeholders are part of it – which is why making third party product verification mandatory must be our ultimate goal.
Our recommendation is simple and in-line with the NZ Building Regulatory Framework and its referenced standards, and recognises that independent credible third party verification/certification is international best practice as pursued in the European Building Regulatory framework.
