Restricted Building Work

Restricted building work’ is work that’s critical to make a home structurally sound and weathertight. You must use Licensed Building Practitioners (LBPs) to design and carry out this work. LBPs are registered and required to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. LBPs are licensed for the type of work they do.

To check if your project is Restricted Building Work see Restricted Building work explained
To check if your industry professional is licensed see the LBP Register
If you already have a Building Consent and need to notify the Council of the LBP working on your Building Consent fill in an LBP Notification form

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.

For more information on Restricted Building Work see the below links:

www.building.govt.nz – Restricted Building Work

www.lbp.govt.nz – The Design Process

www.lbp.govt.nz – The Construction Process

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.

For more information about Restricted Building Work

Licensed Building Practitioners
Owner-Builder Exemptions and Restricted Building Work.
Building Act 2004
- Section 7 interpretation
- Section 14C Responsibilities of Owner-Builder (re: restricted building work)
- Section 45(1)(e) how to apply for a BC, in the case of a BC application with RBW
- Section 84 – 88 Restricted building work must be carried out or supervised by LBPs
- Section 90A – 90D RBW carried out by owner-builders
- Section 92 (2A) Application for CCC: owner to provide ROWs
- Schedule 1 – Exempted building work
Building (Definition of Restricted Building Work) Order 2011
Building (Designation of Building Work Licensing Classes) Order 2010

Licensed Building Practitioner Scheme

For information on the Licensed Building Practitioners (LBP) scheme click here – MBIE information on Licensed Building Practitioners scheme