Making a quality building warrant application: what you need to know

8 Building Standards procedures after approval

Once the building warrant is granted you should be aware of the following.

Making changes

If you want to make any changes to your designs once they have been approved, you must apply for an amendment of building warrant. As with a building warrant application, the work covered in an amendment of warrant application, must not start until the application is approved. Where a Certificate of Design has been used, this may also need to be amended as part of the amendment of warrant.

During construction

You should make sure that your building work is supervised by someone with an appropriate level of expertise. It is ultimately the responsibility of the building owner to ensure that the construction work is completed in accordance with the approved building warrant plans and is compliant with the building regulations. It is the owner’s responsibility to put in place a system of checks to ensure compliance is achieved during construction.

Construction Compliance and Notification Plan (CCNP)

The CCNP will be issued with the building warrant. It outlines what inspections the verifier plans to undertake at scheduled stages of the work. The verifier may also accept other alternative methods to check compliance, such as photographs. When appropriate, remote verification inspections may also be considered as a way to check compliance. The applicant/agent must notify the verifier when work starts and again at the different stages set out in the CCNP.

Inspections carried out by the verifier form part of their duty of ‘reasonable inquiry’ but do not provide a system to control work on site; that is a matter for the contracts and arrangements put in place between the client and builder.

Completion stage

Once building work is complete, a completion certificate must be submitted to the verifier by the ‘relevant person’. It is an offence to occupy a new building or converted building before the completion certificate is accepted.

Relevant person (usually the building owner, tenant or developer) is ultimately responsible for compliance with the building regulations. Where the tenant or developer do not carry out their duties, the owner is responsible. Sections 2 and 4 of this guidance provide further information on roles and responsibilities, and the importance of using suitably qualified professionals to give you assurance that the work is compliant.

Completion certificate process

The relevant person signs and submits a completion certificate to the verifier to confirm that the work has been constructed in accordance with the building warrant and building regulations.

Along with the completion certificate, the verifier may require additional supporting information dependent on the nature and complexity of the building. The Procedural Handbook provides detail on information that may need to accompany a completion certificate submission.