Restricted Building Work

What is Restricted Building Work?

Restricted building work includes the design and construction of a house or small-medium sized apartments and covers:

Primary structure (e.g., foundations and framing) – to ensure the building can withstand vertical and horizontal loads.
External envelope (e.g., roofing and cladding) – to ensure the building is weathertight.
Design of fire safety systems (e.g., sprinklers, fire alarms) – to ensure people are adequately protected from the dangers of smoke and fire (for small to medium-sized apartment buildings only).

It includes building work and building inspection work carried out or supervised for the following licensing classes:

Bricklaying or block-laying work
Carpentry work
External plastering work
Foundations work
Roofing work.

Only Licensed Building Practitioners (LBP) are allowed to carry out or supervise ‘restricted building work’ unless the builder has an owner-builder exemption). Therefore, a residential building consent application must include the names of LBP’s carrying out or supervising both design and construction that is restricted building work.

Major amendments to the plans that involve Restricted Building Work

If you want to make major amendments (changes) to an issued building consent after it has been granted, where the changes will involve restricted building work, those changes will need to be

designed by a design Licensed Building Practitioner and a certificate of design work (COW) provided for the amendments
construction must be done or supervised by trade Licensed Building Practitioners and a record of work (ROW) provided to cover the work.

Before starting a project make sure that the design and trade’s people you engage are licensed.