Licenced Building Practitioner Requiremets for all Trades People - What you Need to Know and Do

Written by building4u on Thursday, 14 July 2011 16:31 in LBP Scheme
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The licenced building practitioners (LBP) scheme promotes, recognises and supports professional skill and behaviour in the building construction industry (Department of Building and Housing - Te Tari Kaupapa Whare)

Although voluntary, from March 1, 2012, any trades person wishing to partake in restricted building work (see below for details) needs to be licenced to do so. The scheme relates to competent individuals, not the companies or commercial entities that employ them, and is designed to encourage better practices in design and construction. If you are already licenced under an existing occupational scheme (e.g. engineers), you will automatically be treated as licenced under the corresponsing class in the LBP scheme for the puposes of carrying out restricted building work.

 

Some facts about the LBP scheme

Benefits of being Licenced

  • formally recognises competency and experience (such as plumbers, architects etc already have via their registratiion systems)
  • able to use the LBP status as a mark of quality in your work
  • listing on the public register (so interetsed parties can see your licence status)
  • supported by an active advertising and promotional programme


What Constitutes Restricted Building Work?

  • design and construction of a house or small-medium sized apartment’s primary structure (eg, foundations and framing) – to ensure the building can withstand vertical and horizontal loads
  • design and construction of a house or small-medium sized apartment’s external envelope (eg, roofing and cladding) – to ensure the building is weathertight
  • design of fire safety systems (eg, sprinklers, fire alarms) for small-medium sized apartments – to ensure people are adequately protected from the dangers of smoke and fire


What are the Licence Classes?

  • Design
  • Site
  • Bricklaying and Blocklaying
  • Carpentry
  • External plastering
  • Foundations
  • Roofing


Building Categories

The LBP scheme uses three categories of building to determine how licence applicants should be assessed, as follows:

 

Building category
Description
Category 1 bulidings Single household dwellings with low or medium risk envelope design
Category 2 bulidings Single household dwellings with high-risk envelope design, or any other buildings with a building height* less than 10 m
Category 3 bulidings All buildings 10 m or greater in building height*, except single househoild dwellings

 

* Building height is the vertical distance between the floors of the building's lowest and highest storeys

Last modified on Wednesday, 18 April 2012 16:41