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Inside The Sun
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Path to recovery Blenheim man Ivan Miller shares his story of addiction, mental illness in the hope of inspiring others.
Page 10
un S The
Blenheim Marlborough
Wednesday March 7, 2012
Hacked off with new rules
Weddings 2012 Plan your dream wedding with the Sun’s 4 page feature.
Pages 16-19
Sun The
h Blenheim Marlboroug
Coming to your letterbox
THIS FRIDAY!
Builder Jon Haack finds the new building rules, which came into effect last week, confusing and a bit of a joke.
By Annabelle Latz Jon Haack says the public will be confused with the new building law. The Department of Building and Housing introduced the Licensed Building Practitioners Scheme on March 1. Jon Haack, of Haack Construction Ltd has been in the building industry for 36 years, as a qualified builder and as a business owner. According to this new scheme, Jon is not qualified enough to hold a builder’s license to allow him the authority to sign off the ‘critical building work’ of a project his company is working on. This is because under this scheme, criteria he
must meet to obtain a license includes using tools on site within the last 10 years. Instead, responsibility of checking off technical work of a project has to be passed over to one of his on-site builders, some of who he has personally trained. The DBH states that Restricted Building Work ensures houses are built safely, with technical aspects being checked over by a qualified person. “I don’t think this scheme has been thought through, that’s my concern,” said Jon. He said this scheme could be detrimental to his business, if the public now perceive that he is not qualified enough to sign off technical work himself.
The process to obtain a license was what Jon found hard enough to come to grips with. “I could have easily told them I work with tools, and I wouldn’t have been checked.” He has a site license, which allows him to drive onto building sites, but still has no right to sign off technical work. He supports the scheme’s new requirement for ongoing training for builders, who must accumulate points each year from reading material and attending courses and seminars. But he said this scheme is not the correct approach for stopping events like Leaky Homes. Continued Page 3.
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