17 - Accompanying personnel during inspections

Purpose

To assess the effectiveness of inspectors' building control processes, how they use the Council's inspection methodology, the level of building compliance achieved, and how inspectors interact on site with consent applicants and builder/contractors.

Background

The inspection processes and the effectiveness of the inspectors are critical to the overall effectiveness of the building control process. This section of the review involved accompanying the inspectors during their normal inspection workload. Observations from the Department often reinforce observations made during the case studies.

Initial review

There were a number of deficiencies in the overall level of technical knowledge of the Council's inspection staff. In particular, gaps were identified in inspectors' knowledge of accessibility compliance, accessible features and weathertightness detailing. These problems were attributed to the time that each inspector was able to spend on site due to high workloads.

Recommendations to the Council	Action taken by the Council before the follow-up review
Note the current workload pressures and the consequent increased risk of inspection error.	Workload pressures were relieved by the additional staff employed by the Council.
Note that the general level of technical knowledge needs to be improved, using an ongoing professional development programme.	This is discussed under part 12 of the review's terms of reference.
Ensure consent review and inspection work is properly resourced with technically competent staff.	The Council employed an additional 10 building control and administrative staff.
Review the inspection-booking system to ensure the inspection staff are given the support they need to manage work flows properly.	A new inspection-booking system has been developed to limit the number of building inspections conducted by inspectors.

Follow-up review

The Council has accepted the initial review's recommendations and while it has not fully adopted these, it advised it was making a concerted effort toward this. A new inspection-booking system was introduced to limit the number of building inspections being undertaken by inspectors to 10 per day. Workload pressures have also been relieved through employing additional staff. The Department did, however, note a number of issues that required the Council's attention, in particular:

• training in certain areas needed to be undertaken and competency assessment processes needed to be developed to identify individual staff training requirements
• the Council's inspection checksheets were not always appropriate for the type of inspection being undertaken
• there was no formal documented inspection methodology for inspectors to use and inspection notes were usually very brief and did not contain all the relevant information.

Recommendations to the Council	Response from the Council
Continue to work on implementing the recommendations identified throughout this report.	The Council advised that it has taken the recommendations outlined in this and previous reports seriously and will continue to work through these and to monitor performance and change as a consequence. It noted that a review of inspector roles, responsibilities and capabilities will be conducted, which includes the documentation of inspection methodology.

Conclusion

The Council has partially implemented the Department's recommendation; however, the findings of the review noted some significant issues that needed to be addressed, including inconsistencies in inspectors' practices and skills, inadequate staff training being provided and non-compliant building work being approved on site and when issuing code compliance certificates.