About overseas products and standards

Aotearoa New Zealand imports about 90 per cent of all building products (or components) sold in the country. 

It can be time consuming for building consent authorities to review and make a decision on new or innovative products that they have not seen before. This adds cost to suppliers and designers who may need to provide more information each time they apply for a building consent for the same product.

The Commerce Commission's market study into residential building supplies found that competition for the supply and purchase of key building supplies is not working as well as it could.

It is too slow and costly to get overseas building products accepted for general use. Typically designers choose products that they know will be easily accepted even though the non-prescriptive Building Code allows for any product to be used as long as it is shown to comply with the Building Code.

To enhance competition in the market, the Commerce Commission recommended that the building regulatory system needed to create clear compliance pathways for more key building supplies and make it easier for designers to show that the products they have chosen comply with the Building Code.

How this will be achieved

Changes to the Building Act 2004 are being progressed and are intended to deliver the greatest benefit for Kiwis through improved competition and lowered costs of building, ensuring our homes and buildings are safe and durable. This will be achieved by:

Recognising certain overseas standard organisations

Using a set of criteria, the Government will recognise overseas standards organisations and standards certification schemes. This will make it easier for any building product that has met an appropriate standard from a recognised standards organisation to be specified in a building design.

The change will remove the need for designers, builders, building owners and building consent authorities to verify the adequacy of a standard or the robustness of a product certification scheme, and allow them to rely on what has been recognised by the Government.

Building consent authorities typically must rely on information on equivalent standards and the performance of products. The change will ensure that building consent authorities are protected where specified standards from overseas standards organisations and standards certification schemes are used.

Streamlining the citing of international standards

The Government is amending the Building Act to enable a new regulatory instrument (called the building product specification) to be published.  This will contain all the building product specifications and standards that can be used with the acceptable solutions and verification methods to demonstrate compliance with the Building Code.

As long as a product (no matter where it is from) complies with an equal standard for its specific purpose, the building can comply with the acceptable solutions and verification methods and the building must be accepted by Building Consent Authorities.

Implementation will involve moving product manufacturing and testing standards from the acceptable solutions and verification methods that are published under the Building Act to the building product specification.

MBIE’s initial thinking in implementing building product specifications is to focus on identifying equal standards, where the main costs of construction are concentrated (eg standards relating to products such as internal linings, external cladding, windows, plumbing products and insulation).

Mandating the acceptance of products certified overseas

Currently, CodeMark is the product certification scheme in Aotearoa New Zealand that shows a building product or method meets the requirements of the Building Code.

To increase flexibility and enable effective and proactive implementation of existing provisions, the Building Act will be amended to:

• enable the Chief Executive of MBIE to be able to recognise entire schemes, or classes or groups of products.
• remove existing requirements for certification and add a regulation-making power to set criteria for the recognition of certified products.
• require building consent authorities to accept recognised overseas products as establishing compliance with the Building Code.

There will also be decision making-criteria in regulations to guide the Chief Executive’s decisions.

Additional information

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If you have any questions or enquiries, please email building@mbie.govt.nz