Southland District Council’s Building Team First in the South!

Southland District Council’s building control section learned today that it is the first in the south to be accredited as a building consent authority.

Manager Building Control Kevin O’Connor said his team has been working for the past three years in preparation for today’s announcement.

The work has involvedcountless hours documenting systems and procedures, upskilling and setting up quality assurance monitoring.

The accreditation process was managed by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) and a team from IANZ made several visits to Southland and spent three daysat Council last month. After the IANZ visit Council had three Corrective Action Requests (CARS) to meet before gaining accreditation. Council has met all these requests to the satisfaction of IANZ.“

We are extremely happy to have gained accreditation, it has been a long and involved process and everyone in the team has worked extremely hard to see itcompleted pretty well ahead of the play”, he said.

Hurunui District Council in North Canterbury was the first Council in the South Island to gain accreditation and Southland District was the sixth Council overall outof all Councils in the country to be accredited and the first in the southern half of the South Island.

Since the leaky building problems first surfaced Government has introduced a numberof requirements in the Building Act 2004 and has placed an obligation on councils toseek accreditation as a building consent authority if that Council wishes to continueissuing building consents.

Group Manager - Regulatory Services Lindsay McKenzie said that this is a tremendous achievement and a reflection of the massive effort of Kevin O’Connor and all his team.

“This means that Southland District Council has completed its accreditation within the original deadline set by Government of 1 November 2007. Because so manycouncils around the country have been struggling to meet accreditation requirements the deadline has been extended to 30 June 2008”, he said.

Southland District Council will be reassessed as a building consent authority everytwo years