The reform
The government proposed the largest overhaul of the building consent system since 2004. Liability for construction failures, long concentrated on councils as the party of last resort, would be shared among all parties in proportion to their responsibility. The aim was to reduce councils’ risk aversion and speed up consents.
The article, written with Dat Tien Doan and Amirhosein Ghaffarianhoseini, accepted the logic of the reform but identified its weak point. Proportionate liability depends on knowing who did what, when. Without reliable records, responsibility cannot be traced, and the reform would repeat the lesson of the leaky homes crisis, in which failures surfaced years later with no clear trail of accountability.
Digital accountability can’t be treated as an afterthought, it must be built into the system from the very beginning.
The Conversation, republished by interest.co.nz
The proposals
Four measures were set out:
- A golden thread of secure, time stamped digital records of every inspection, approval and design change, on the model adopted in the United Kingdom
- A single national consent portal in place of 67 separate council systems, following Singapore’s CORENET X
- BIM and digital twins, with compliance approvals embedded from the earliest design stage
- Remote inspections by video, photographs and drones to relieve inspection bottlenecks
Why it matters
The argument turns a technology debate into a governance one. Digital tools are often presented as efficiencies; here they are the condition that makes a legal reform enforceable. A national portal also addresses a practical problem builders know well: the same project can face different processes and expectations in different districts.
The article drew on his long engagement with BIM in New Zealand, including his role as the academic member of BIMinNZ, and on the School’s research on digital construction and automated compliance. It was republished by interest.co.nz, NZ City, PlaceMakers and The National Tribune in Australia, reaching builders, merchants and policy readers as well as the general public.
Learning from abroad
The article’s international examples are deliberate. The United Kingdom adopted the golden thread after the Grenfell Tower fire exposed how little was known about what had been built and by whom. Singapore’s CORENET X shows how a single digital platform can integrate approvals across agencies. New Zealand can learn from both without waiting for a disaster to force change.