Alister Hunt – 11/10/02
To: The Editor NZine
As you are aware there has been widespread media coverage in New Zealand recently of many new homes leaking badly and rotting. Most of the coverage so far has concerned the effects on house owners. Fair enough, but I believe there are more fundamental questions to be addressed too.
I instance some of these. However the list is far from complete:
a. Why did it take so long for the insurance industry to focus on the problem?
b. What was the infrastructure, technical and political background that led to the fiasco?
c. Is the Building Code really up to it? If not, why not? Who was involved in its preparation, and did Government have strong and truly independent representation on the committees that drew it up?
d. Why have the Building Inspectors and their bosses, particularly from local authorities, taken so long to bring the situation to public attention, and why have their historic inspections failed so miserably?
e. Why are local authorities now playing down the scale of the problem (massively in my view) as instanced by their estimate of $30 million for repairs?
f. Methods to control the quality of projects or industries have been around for a long time i.e. Quality Control (making sure of the quality of the bits of a project), and Quality Assurance (assuring quality of all the bits together).
Why have these methods only been used haphazardly, and not comprehensively required by law for every stage of house design and construction?
g. Who in Government has a watching brief on overseas trends and developments in the building and construction industry?
This would include looking out for problems and solutions. There appears to be no government department with this brief, or the staff to do it.
h. Are there parallels with many other failures over the last ten years or so?
I am thinking of such things as the Cave Creek disaster, the Opuha Dam collapse, the grounding of the Jodi F Millennium at Gisborne, building construction failures and many retaining wall collapses.
A long list could be made of failures that one felt should not have happened, and might not have happened in different circumstances.
It is worrying to think that the way the Government is addressing this issue – by Select Committee – will give them the freedom to report and act in a totally politically biased way. Such an approach, which does not admit errors of the past, may well lead to a narrow investigation and more fiascos in the future. And again, I do not see that they have any independent, qualified and experienced engineering or architectural advisers. There are none in the Civil Service and all private sector consultants are either tainted by the fiasco, or lack the necessary independence.
I have no doubt that there should be a Commission of Inquiry.
Yours sincerely
Alister Hunt
8th October 2002
