Page 19 - Build 151

IN BRIEF
NZ technology for North America
Christchurch start-up Prestressed Timber has signed an agreement with Canadian forestry industry company Forest Products Innovation for its laminated timber technology, Pres-Lam. The agreement paves the way for the use of Pres-Lam in North America for constructing mid-rise and tall timber buildings.
Restrictive rules the culprit
The Productivity Commission’s Using Land for Housing report found that land supply is the critical issue undermining housing affordability. ‘Restrictive planning rules come with significant costs for prospective homeowners,’ says Building and Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith. ‘We need to subject these rules to far greater scrutiny if we are to achieve improve housing affordability.’
For more Visit www.productivity.govt.nz.
Please Minister
Minister of Local Government Paula Bennett is happy to field enquiries about the Resource Management Act. If you come up against some loopy rule or some overzealous government or council worker is getting in your way, she invites you to get in touch by sending the details to [email protected] or email [email protected].
Compulsory solar for suburb
Australasia’s first mandated solar suburb has been mooted for a new housing development in Canberra. Developers of Denman Prospect require that each dwelling has a 3 kW system that can generate around half the energy used by an average household.
Plan should account for rising seas
Christchurch ecologist Dr Colin Meurk says the development of east Christchurch needs to be properly planned for the next 100 years to accommodate almost certain sea-level rise. ‘We need to think ahead about building and developing for a century or so and migrating the ideas and structures as oceans rise – in an organised
and planned way.’
News
Better
protection for
subbies
The Construction Contracts Amendment Act 2015, enacted on 22 October 2015, provides industry with improved security of payment and better access to dispute resolution.
THIS NEW LAW will require retention money – that pre- viously could be put at risk by clients and main contractors by being used as working capital – to be held in trust and therefore protected in the event of a business failure.
‘It means that people who do the bulk of the physical work on building projects get properly paid,’ says Building and Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith.
Payers can hold those retentions in liquid assets such as accounts receivable. Even if they do not receive their accounts receivable, payers will still have to pay the full amount of retentions when they are due or they could be found in breach of the trust. The trust requirement applies to all new commercial contracts entered into from 31 March 2017.
Includes residential
The other signi cant change is the extension of the payment and adjudication provisions of
the Act to include residential building work contracts as well as commercial work – e ectively doubling its ambit to all $16 billion of construction work carried out nationally.
This builds on the changes to the Building Act that came into e ect on 1 January 2015 requiring residential building work over $30,000 in value to be covered by written contracts.
Construction-related services also covered
The scope of the Act has also been widened to include construction-related services from 1 September 2016, such as work by architects, engineers and quantity surveyors. These professions will now be able to access the payment and dispute resolution processes in the Act.
Meanwhile, consumers will have greater means to hold architects, engineers and quantity surveyors to account for their work.
For more Visit www.building.govt. nz/construction-contracts-act.
Build 151 — December 2015/January 2016 — 17