You pay the certifier, you choose the certifier, and the certifier does not work for you. Building Commission NSW puts it about as bluntly as a regulator can: certifiers are “public officials and independent regulators of development” who “are required to uphold the public interest” and “don’t work for builders or developers”. That sentence is the whole guide in miniature. The person holding the gate between your finished building and your settlement schedule is not on your team, and cannot be.
The appointment is a contract you sign, but the certifier’s powers come from statute rather than from that contract, and the two do not always sit where you expect. Some of the obligations land on you rather than on your builder: in New South Wales it is the developer who lodges the statutory notices that stand between you and an occupation certificate, and in Victoria it is an offence under the Building Act 1993 to occupy a new building without an occupancy permit where one is required. The questions worth putting to a certifier before you appoint them and to your construction lawyer are set out near the end.
Figures, registration classes and statutory timeframes in this guide were current at the date of writing and change. New South Wales passed the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026 in August 2026, with commencement tied to regulations still being developed. Victoria’s regulator now operates as the Building and Plumbing Commission. Queensland’s professional indemnity insurance exemption for external cladding runs to a fixed date. Each linked primary source is where to confirm the position before you rely on it.
What does a building certifier actually do on a development?
A building certifier assesses whether your design complies with the building rules, meaning the National Construction Code as adopted in your state, issues the approval that lets construction start, inspects the work at prescribed stages, and issues the certificate that lets people occupy the building. Four functions, three of which sit on your critical path.
Building Commission NSW describes the role in terms worth quoting because they cut against how most developers instinctively treat a certifier. The certifier “isn’t a project manager or site supervisor”. Responsibility for building to the approved plans sits with the builder. Responsibility for meeting the conditions of consent sits with the applicant. The Northern Territory regulator says the same thing in almost identical language: the building certifier “is not a site supervisor and their inspections do not replace day-to-day site supervision”.
The practical version for a developer is that a certifier’s inspection is a compliance check against a code, not a quality check on your behalf. A pre-pour footing inspection confirms the reinforcement matches the approved design. It does not tell you whether your builder is running four weeks behind, whether the concrete supply is contracted, or whether the subcontractor pricing you assumed still holds. Developers who treat certifier sign-off as project assurance tend to discover the gap at the point where discovering it is most expensive.
The three gates that matter commercially are the same everywhere, whatever the local terminology:
The approval to build. In New South Wales it is a construction certificate or a complying development certificate. In Victoria it is a building permit. In Queensland it is a building development approval. In Western Australia it is a building permit issued by the permit authority. Until you have it, you cannot lawfully start, and your finance drawdown schedule generally assumes you can.
The inspections during construction. Prescribed stages where work has to be inspected before it is covered up. Miss a notification and the remedy is usually opening up completed work or obtaining supporting certification after the fact, both of which cost time.
The approval to occupy. Occupation certificate, occupancy permit, certificate of occupancy, certificate of final inspection, depending on where you are. This is the gate that touches your feasibility hardest, because it usually sits between practical completion and settlement of your pre-sales, and every week it slips is a week of land holding costs and interest you did not budget.
Is a building certifier the same thing as a building surveyor?
In most of Australia they are the same person under different labels, and the label is set by state law rather than by the profession. Neither should be confused with the superintendent or contract administrator, who administers the building contract rather than the building rules.
In New South Wales the statutory office is “registered certifier”, and the class that certifies buildings is “building surveyor”. In Victoria the office is “relevant building surveyor”. In Queensland it is “building certifier”, licensed by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission. In the Australian Capital Territory the appointed person is the “building certifier” and must hold a building surveyor licence. In the Northern Territory it is “building certifier”. In South Australia it is an “accredited professional” in a building class. In Western Australia and Tasmania the term is “building surveyor”.
Two disambiguations save real confusion.
A building surveyor is not a land surveyor. The land surveyor sets out boundaries, levels and the survey plan that eventually registers your lots. The building surveyor assesses code compliance and issues approvals. Different qualifications, different registers, different moments in your programme, and on a subdivision you will need both.
A certifier is also not your designer. The architect or building designer prepares the documentation. The certifier assesses it. In most jurisdictions the same firm cannot do both on the same project, which is the conflict of interest point covered below.
Who appoints the building certifier, and can the builder choose?
The owner or developer appoints the certifier, and in several jurisdictions the builder is expressly prohibited from making or influencing that choice.
Building Commission NSW states it plainly: “Your builder isn’t allowed to appoint your certifier, or influence your choice.” Victoria’s Building and Plumbing Commission takes the same position for domestic building work, stating that “only an owner or agent of the owner may appoint a private building surveyor” and that “by law, the builder can’t appoint the building surveyor if work is domestic building work under a domestic building contract”. In the Australian Capital Territory, “the landowner appoints a building certifier”.
Two traps sit inside that rule, and both are ordinary rather than exotic.
The first is the design contract. Victoria’s regulator warns that a design services contract may contain an authority for the designer to appoint the building surveyor on your behalf, and advises checking before signing: “you should only sign this authority if you agree to allow the other person to appoint your building surveyor”. A developer who signs a standard architect’s engagement without reading that clause may have delegated the appointment without noticing.
The second is the informal appointment. Victoria has a rule that surprises people. Once you apply for a building permit and the surveyor starts work, “that person will then be known as the relevant building surveyor”, and the regulator adds that this applies “even if you have not signed a contract or provided written confirmation of the appointment”. Letting a surveyor start assessing while you are still negotiating fees may effectively be the appointment. Given how hard the appointment then is to unwind, the trap is treating the negotiation phase as reversible.
A private building surveyor in Victoria must also notify the relevant council within seven days of appointment, which is worth knowing because it creates a dated record of when the appointment happened.
Which class of certifier do you need for your building?
Registration is tiered almost everywhere, and the tier is set by building class, storeys or floor area. Appointing a certifier whose registration does not cover your building is a problem you discover at the worst moment, because the certificate they issue may be open to challenge.
The thresholds that repeat across jurisdictions are three storeys and 2,000 square metres. Above either, you are generally into the top tier of registration.
Queensland licenses three levels. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission sets the scope for a building certifier level 2 as performing certifying functions, without supervision, “on buildings and structures having a rise of no more than 3 storeys and a total floor area of no more than 2000m²”. Level 1 covers all classes of building. Level 3 is limited to class 1 and class 10 buildings, which in practice means houses, townhouses, garages and sheds. Queensland also layers endorsements on top: a private certification endorsement allows the certifier to “certify building work as a private certifier”, and a development approval endorsement allows them to “issue building permits as a private certifier”.
South Australia runs four building classes under its accredited professionals scheme. PlanSA sets Building Level 1 as able to “assess and provide building consent for any class of development”. Building Level 2 is “limited to buildings that are no more than three storeys in height or have a floor area of no more than 2,000m2”. Building Level 3 is “limited to Class 1 and Class 10 buildings that are no more than two storeys in height or have a floor area of no more than 500m2”. Building Level 4 is an inspector class. Note that PlanSA states accreditation at Building Level 2 also carries Level 3 and Level 4, and that this is “the only higher level accreditation that includes accreditation at the lower levels”.
The Australian Capital Territory licenses six building surveyor classes. The Territory’s planning authority sets the general building surveyor scope as certification work “in relation to a building that is three storeys or lower and that has a floor area of 2000m2 or less”, with the principal building surveyor classes unrestricted by that threshold.
The Northern Territory keeps it to two. Building Advisory Services describes a building certifier (unrestricted) as able to “certify buildings of all classes”, and a building certifier (residential) as “limited to certifying class 1 buildings such as houses, duplexes and townhouses, and class 10 buildings or structures”.
New South Wales uses three categories but describes them by building class rather than by size. Building Commission NSW states that “building surveyors can hold either unrestricted or restricted registration”, that unrestricted “means you can survey any type of building”, and that restricted registration “limits the types of buildings you can survey”, with a restricted class covering class 1 and 10 buildings. The published page does not set out storey or floor area thresholds for each category, so the conditions written on the individual’s registration are what actually governs, and Building Commission NSW directs applicants to check both the register entry and any conditions on it.
Western Australia separates the certifying function by registration type rather than by building size. The state’s guidance notes that individuals registered as building surveying “practitioners” cannot issue compliance certificates themselves, but may be the nominated supervisor of a registered building service contractor or a local government employee. In other words, the entity that signs matters as much as the person.
The general point is that class of registration is a live procurement question, not a formality. On a five storey apartment building, a certifier restricted to three storeys is not a cheaper option. They are not an option.
How does building certification work in each state and territory?
The sequence is broadly the same across Australia. The names, the certificates and the identity of the approving body are not.
New South Wales
The developer appoints a principal certifier before work commences. Building Commission NSW confirms this can be “a registered building surveyor, your local council or a registered body corporate”, meaning a certification company rather than an individual. The principal certifier carries out mandatory inspections during construction, and if they find a non-compliance “they must issue a written direction to comply” and, if it is not resolved, “must report it to the council”.
Two features of the New South Wales system are worth a developer’s attention.
Critical stage inspections may generally be carried out by another certifier with the principal certifier’s agreement, with the significant exception of the final inspection before an occupation certificate, which is not delegable. That final inspection is therefore a scheduling dependency on one specific person.
Building Commission NSW also introduced “inspecting up” provisions announced on 25 May 2026, allowing certifiers in restricted registration classes to carry out critical stage inspections in the class above their own, under supervision and with the consent of the appointed principal certifier, while the principal certifier must still carry out the final critical stage inspection. The stated aim is capacity. For a developer, the practical read is that inspection capacity on a large job may be less of a bottleneck than it was, while final sign off remains a single point.
Victoria
The owner or their authorised agent appoints a private building surveyor, or applies to council and uses the municipal building surveyor. The Building and Plumbing Commission sets out that a registered building surveyor is authorised to assess building permit applications against the Building Act 1993, the Building Regulations 2018 and the National Construction Code (NCC), to issue building and occupancy permits and certificates of final inspection, to conduct inspections at mandatory notification stages, to give directions to fix non-compliant work, and to serve building notices and orders.
Three Victorian features carry commercial weight.
You may appoint only one building surveyor to a project, and the regulator states that ending an appointment “can only happen in rare circumstances”. Victoria is the jurisdiction where getting the appointment right at the start matters most, because the exit is narrow.
The relevant building surveyor decides which mandatory notification stages apply and lists them on the building permit. Your builder then has to notify at each stage. That list is worth reading against your construction programme before work starts rather than after.
Victoria’s regulator is now the Building and Plumbing Commission, which operates as the trading name of the Victorian Building Authority. Older documents and older contract templates referring to the Victorian Building Authority still point at the same body.
Queensland
A private certifier assesses your building development application, issues the building development approval, inspects, and issues the certificate of occupancy. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission is the licensing body, and the endorsements described above determine whether a certifier can act privately at all.
Queensland is one of the few jurisdictions where the certifier’s scope of work is written out in licensing terms a developer can read directly, which makes verifying a certifier’s authority for your specific building relatively straightforward.
South Australia
Building consent is assessed by a council or by an accredited professional in a building class, under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016. PlanSA notes that an accredited professional must hold professional indemnity insurance, comply with a code of conduct, undergo annual compliance checks and complete continuing professional development, and that a maximum penalty of $10,000 applies to a person purporting to act as an accredited professional without accreditation.
Western Australia
Western Australia splits the roles. A registered building surveyor certifies the design. The permit authority, normally your local government, issues the permit. Building and Energy’s overview of the Act describes a certified application as one “accompanied by a certificate of design compliance signed by an independent building surveyor”, confirming the building will comply with the building standards.
The timing consequence is the useful part. That overview states a permit authority “has 10 business days to issue a building permit after receipt of a certified application”, against 25 days for an uncertified application, with uncertified applications available only for single residential buildings and associated non-habitable buildings. Note that this fact sheet carries an older publication date, so the current Act and regulations are where to confirm before you programme around it. The structural point holds regardless: in Western Australia, getting the certificate of design compliance done properly ahead of lodgement is what buys the shorter statutory clock.
At completion, an occupancy permit application requires a certificate of construction compliance signed by an independent building surveyor.
Tasmania
Tasmania sorts building work by risk. Consumer, Building and Occupational Services states that “the Building Act 2016 takes a risk-based approach to building approval”, with low risk work requiring no permit, and higher categories requiring building surveyor involvement and, at the top category, a permit from the council as permit authority. Because the category determines both the approval pathway and who has to be engaged, confirming which category your work falls into with the Building Act 2016 and the permit authority is generally a first step rather than an afterthought.
Australian Capital Territory
The landowner appoints a licensed building certifier who issues the building approval, issues a commencement notice, confirms housing indemnity insurance or a fidelity certificate is in place before work begins, conducts inspections, and issues the certificate of completion once building work has been satisfactorily completed. The Territory sets a professional indemnity insurance floor for certifiers of “a minimum limit of indemnity of $1 million for any one claim”.
Northern Territory
Private certification is the norm. Building Advisory Services states that under Northern Territory law “you must engage a registered, private building certifier” for most building projects, and that the certifier must submit the permit, plans and relevant documents to the Director of Building Control.
The Northern Territory also has a completion structure worth knowing if you inherit a building with paperwork gaps. There are three levels of occupancy certification: an occupancy permit, which is “the highest level of occupancy certification available”; a certificate of substantial compliance, granted where work under a valid building permit meets the technical standards but “minor variations to the approved plans or missing documentation or inspections has occurred”; and a certificate of existence, which “can only be granted for work that was completed before 1 May 2016”. The Territory is explicit that “you must have occupancy certification before you occupy the building”.
What does the conflict of interest rule stop you doing?
It stops you buying certification from anyone with a stake in the outcome, and the definition of stake is wider than most developers assume.
New South Wales prohibits a registered certifier from carrying out certification work where they have a conflict of interest, and treats a certifier as having a private interest where they are a person “obtaining the benefit of the certification work” or a person with “a pecuniary interest in the development or building to which the certification work relates”. Building Commission NSW also identifies prescribed conflicts, including advising on amending plans or specifications to comply with the National Construction Code (NCC) or a legislative requirement, then certifying the result.
Victoria goes further, and the extra distance is the part worth reading. The Building and Plumbing Commission’s code of conduct for building surveyors says a conflict “may be actual, potential or perceived”, and that a conflict may exist “where a reasonable and informed person believes that such a conflict exists”. Its worked examples include being a director of a company engaged in building work such as drafting or engineering when an application comes in for a project designed by that company, and offering to act as a consultant building surveyor to a developer while already acting as relevant building surveyor for another project by the same developer.
That last example is the one that catches repeat developers. Engaging the same firm as compliance consultant on project A and relevant building surveyor on project B is not automatically fine, and Victoria treats a contravention of section 79 of the Building Act 1993 as an offence rather than a matter to be managed.
The Australian Capital Territory frames it in terms of the land itself: a certifier “can’t have a conflict of interest in the building work”, for example a “legal, financial or personal interest in the land or the completion of the building work”.
The commercial read for a developer is not about ethics in the abstract. A certificate issued in a conflicted position is a certificate exposed to challenge, and a challenged occupation certificate is a settlement problem. The trap is the design and construct procurement route, where the same consultant chain does documentation and compliance advice, and where the certifier ends up assessing work their own colleagues shaped. Structuring design and construct contracts so the certification line stays clean is a question for your lawyer before novation, not after.
Can you replace your certifier mid-project?
You can, but the process is slow enough that it should be treated as a programme risk rather than an administrative step.
New South Wales offers two routes. By agreement between you, the current certifier and the replacement, the replacement notifies the current certifier and the council using the prescribed form within two days of appointment, and the appointment can only be made after that notification. Where agreement is not possible, you apply to Building Commission NSW with reasons that “must include any negligence, incompetence and/or breach of the Code of Conduct for Certifiers”, supported by “relevant events, times, dates and locations”.
Then the number that matters. Building Commission NSW states that “the average assessment time frame for an application to replace a principal certifier is six to eight weeks”. On a contested replacement, that is six to eight weeks during which you cannot appoint the new certifier, on top of the time to prepare the application and the time for the incoming certifier to get across a job they did not start.
Two further New South Wales points carry real exposure. The builder “cannot apply to replace the principal certifier, even with the owner’s consent, unless the builder is an owner-builder”, so this is the developer’s problem to run. And your certifier “must tell you immediately if their registration is expired, suspended or cancelled”, at which point the replacement application is the only path forward. That risk is precisely why checking the certifier disciplinary register alongside the public register of certifiers at appointment is cheap insurance. Building Commission NSW recommends checking both, noting they are separate records.
Victoria is tighter still. The Building and Plumbing Commission states that ending a building surveyor appointment “can only happen in rare circumstances”. On a Victorian project the appointment decision is close to irreversible in practice, which shifts the weight onto due diligence at the front end.
The way this shows up in a feasibility is not as a line item. It is a tail risk on the completion date, and completion date risk is where construction programme assumptions meet interest cost and pre-sale sunset dates.
Where does certification hit your programme and your margin?
At three points, and the third is the expensive one.
At approval. Every week between lodging for a construction certificate or building permit and holding it is a week your builder cannot start and your facility sits undrawn while the land continues to cost you. Incomplete documentation is the usual cause, and it is usually visible in advance.
At inspection. A missed mandatory notification stage means work has been covered up that a certifier has not seen. The remedy is opening up, or obtaining supporting certification, and both consume float. The developers who avoid this generally have the inspection list from the permit sitting inside the construction programme rather than in a separate folder.
At occupation. This is where certification stops being an approvals question and becomes a cashflow question. No occupation certificate, no settlement of your pre-sales, no revenue, and holding costs continuing to accrue against a facility that was priced on a different completion date.
New South Wales adds a layer here that catches developers who have not built a class 2 apartment building recently. For regulated buildings, which Building Commission NSW describes as “any Class 2, 3, or 9c building or building with a Class 2, 3, or 9c part”, the obligations sit on the developer, not the certifier or the builder, and they are timed.
Before work starts, a developer must nominate the building practitioner, design practitioner and principal certifier on the NSW Planning Portal, and enter the building work commencement date before works commence.
Before applying for an occupation certificate, the developer must give an expected completion notice and a notice of intention to seek an occupation certificate. Building Commission NSW states that “notice must be given at least 6 months, but no more than 12 months, before applying for an occupation certificate”, with a short programme exception requiring the expected completion notice within 30 days of building work commencing.
Two more items attach to the same gate. A building work levy is payable before the occupation certificate application for class 2, 3 and 9c work, with Building Commission NSW noting that existing class 3 and 9c work “will be exempt from the building work levy until 1 July 2028”. And for class 2, developers of new eligible apartment buildings “4 storeys or higher must pay a building bond to Building Commission NSW equal to 2% of the total price paid or payable of all contracts for the building”.
The consequence of getting the notice timing wrong is not a fine you absorb. Building Commission NSW states there “can be serious consequences if notice is not provided, including fines and a prohibition order that delays the occupation certificate being issued”, and that selection for audit “will prevent the developer from applying for an occupation certificate”. A six month minimum notice period means the trigger sits roughly at structure stage on a typical apartment programme, long before anyone is thinking about settlement. The trap is treating occupation certificate preparation as an end-of-job task when the statutory clock started much earlier.
That 2 per cent building bond is also a working capital item rather than a cost, and it is the kind of thing that belongs in a cashflow model from the start rather than as a late surprise alongside home warranty insurance and the other statutory items that cluster around completion.
What is changing for certifiers in New South Wales?
New South Wales passed the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026 in August 2026, and the certification consequences are substantial, but commencement depends on regulations that were still being developed at the date of writing.
Building Commission NSW states that “the reforms will come into effect once the associated regulations have been developed”, with industry consultation on those regulations running through 2026 and 2027. So the Act exists, and the timing does not.
Four changes matter to a developer.
Building approvals move out of the planning Act. The reform takes building approvals out of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and puts them under the new Act, on the reasoning that building approvals happen after planning approval. If your standard consultant briefs and contract templates cite Environmental Planning and Assessment Act clause numbers for post-consent certification, they will need revisiting on commencement.
Staged approvals get formalised. The ministerial release announcing the Bill on 6 May 2026 described establishing “a system of staged approvals to allow construction to begin and for people to move in as early as possible”, and removing the need for duplicative designs for the same building elements, which it estimated at “approximately $330,000 per apartment block”. Treat that saving figure as the government’s own estimate rather than a modelling input.
Minor variations get an approval pathway. The release described allowing minor variations to a development consent, giving the examples of changing the size of a door or installing an outside tap, to be approved within the approval framework. Where that lands relative to the existing section 4.55 modification process is a question the regulations will answer.
Conflict of interest penalties increase sharply. The release stated the reform will “increase maximum court-imposed penalties from $33,000 to $1.1 million for certifiers who breach conflict-of-interest requirements”, with automatic suspension where a court convicts a certifier of a conflict of interest breach. Note that Building Commission NSW’s own reform page describes this increase as proposed and contingent on commencement, so the current maximum is what applies until the regulations are made.
The second order effect is the one to think about. A certifier facing a seven figure maximum penalty and automatic suspension has a strong incentive to decline anything that looks even arguably conflicted. Developers who have relied on a single trusted consultancy across design advice and certification may find that arrangement declined rather than negotiated. That is a procurement change, and it may also be a fee change, because a smaller pool of willing certifiers on complex work is not usually a cheaper pool.
What does a certifier’s professional indemnity insurance actually cover?
Less than the size of your project, and in one state currently not cladding at all.
Queensland sets a floor. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission requires a certifier seeking a private certification endorsement to hold professional indemnity insurance with a minimum limit of indemnity of $1 million for any one claim, and the same figure in aggregate for any one period of insurance, for liability arising from private certifying functions. Defence costs are required to sit in addition to that limit, and the policy must carry at least one automatic reinstatement.
The cladding position in Queensland is the one to read carefully. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission states that until 30 June 2027, “private certifiers do not require professional indemnity insurance coverage for performing private certifying functions directly related to external cladding”, where the cladding does not comply with an Act, an Australian Standard or the building code. That date was extended from 30 June 2025. There is also grandfathering: where a certifier obtains an exempted licence and holds a policy with a cladding related exclusion before 30 June 2027, “their exempted licence will still be valid” until it expires. For a developer, the read is that on a Queensland building with composite cladding, certifier insurance may not be a source of recovery, and pricing that risk elsewhere is a conversation for your lawyer and broker.
New South Wales ties the requirement to the Regulation rather than publishing a figure. Building Commission NSW states the policy must “cover all liabilities from the time you first became registered” and “ensure there are no gaps in coverage”, and must meet the minimum level of cover set by the Regulation. Two related facts on the same page matter more to a developer than the dollar figure. Certifiers “can be held proportionally liable for their work for up to 10 years under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act”, with civil suits for defective work to be filed within ten years of completion, except for death or personal injury. And run off cover after a certifier leaves the profession is “recommended but not mandatory”.
Put those two together and the exposure becomes obvious. Your certifier may carry ten year liability, and may retire in year four with no obligation to maintain cover for the remaining six. Whether the certification firm you appoint is a company that will still exist, and whether it carries run off cover as a matter of policy, is a question with an answer worth having before you sign.
The Australian Capital Territory publishes its floor: a minimum limit of indemnity of $1 million for any one claim.
Across every jurisdiction, the same arithmetic applies. A $1 million limit against a $60 million apartment building is not project insurance. It is practitioner insurance, and it sits alongside rather than instead of the construction and defects cover you carry yourself.
How does building certification work in New Zealand?
Councils still do most of it, but the monopoly has started to open, and two reform tracks are running at once.
Building consent authorities are the approving bodies. As at March 2026, the Minister for Building and Construction stated there were 69 of them delivering building control functions in New Zealand, made up of 66 territorial or regional authorities, two private building consent authorities and an independent division of Kāinga Ora. The second private building consent authority was approved in March 2026, following the first in May 2025.
A private building consent authority in New Zealand performs the full set of building control functions: “processing and approving consents, inspecting work during construction, issuing code compliance certificates, and taking enforcement action if required”. Approval is not simple. An organisation must gain accreditation from International Accreditation New Zealand, and satisfy the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that it meets a fit and proper person test and has adequate means to cover the civil liabilities that may arise from operating as a building consent authority.
The scale of the opening should be read realistically. Two private authorities against 66 councils is not a competitive market yet, and the second approval was tied to a single client’s retirement village pipeline nationally. A New Zealand developer’s default assumption should remain that the local council is the consent authority.
Separately, New Zealand is introducing voluntary self-certification. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment describes a scheme that “allows endorsed plumbers and drainlayers to certify eligible work themselves” instead of having it inspected by a building consent authority, and states that certifying plumbers and drainlayers “will be able to apply to become endorsed by the end of 2026”. A parallel scheme for residential builders is described as “still being developed” and “not yet available”.
The consequence for a New Zealand developer is a possible reduction in inspection hold points on simple residential work, rather than a change to who consents the building. The consent itself remains, and self-certification certifies compliance with that consent rather than replacing it.
What to ask a certifier before you appoint them
These are questions with checkable answers, and the answers should come before the fee proposal is signed rather than after.
On registration and scope. What class of registration do you hold, and does it cover this building’s class, storeys and floor area without a condition? Are there any conditions on your registration, and what are they? Is the appointment with you personally or with a company, and if the company, who is the nominated individual and what happens if they leave?
On conflict. Have you or anyone in your firm provided design, drafting, engineering or compliance advice on this project or on any current project of mine? Do you act for the builder on any other job? What is your process for identifying a perceived conflict rather than only an actual one?
On insurance. What is your professional indemnity limit and is it per claim or in aggregate? Is the policy retrospective to your first registration? Does it carry any exclusion relevant to this building, including cladding? Do you carry run off cover, and for how long?
On the programme. Which mandatory inspection stages will you list on the permit or approval? What notice do you require for each? What is your turnaround from notification to attendance? Who covers your inspections if you are unavailable, and can they? What documentation do you need in hand, and by when, before you will consider the occupation certificate or occupancy permit application?
On capacity. How many projects are you currently principal certifier on? Who at your firm actually attends site? If you were suspended or resigned tomorrow, what happens to my project?
What to ask your construction lawyer
On the appointment. Does the certifier’s contract sit properly alongside the building contract, and do the notification and inspection obligations in the building contract line up with the inspection stages the certifier will impose? Does my design consultant’s engagement contain an authority for them to appoint the certifier on my behalf, and do I want that? What is my exit if the relationship fails, and in this state, is there one?
On the statutory obligations that fall on me. Which notices, levies and bonds am I personally required to lodge, in what sequence, and what is the earliest date each becomes possible? What happens to my occupation certificate application if one is late? Who in my team is accountable for lodging them, and is that written down anywhere?
On conflict. Given my consultant chain, is there any perceived conflict in the certifier I am proposing to appoint? Does my procurement structure, particularly under a design and construct route, create one at novation?
On risk allocation. If the certifier is wrong, what is my recovery, and against whom? How does proportionate liability affect that, and does anything in my contracts waive it? What is my limitation period in this state, and when does it start?
On timing. What is my exposure if the occupation certificate or occupancy permit is delayed past my pre-sale sunset dates, and does my contract of sale deal with certification delay as a cause? How does that interact with my facility’s completion covenants?