About Us

The Waikato Building Consent Group is a collaborative cluster of five Councils in the Waikato set up in 2004. The vision of the group is to foster co-operation and consistency in building control functions, processes and documentation in order to provide an excellent and consistent customer service across the Waikato region.

The partnership includes the Building Control Units from:

The group is managed by Group Manager Elizabeth Goodwin, answering directly to the Group Governance Committee, the Senior Managers of the five Councils.

The Group Manager and Building Control Managers meet together monthly to discuss issues and to decide on a common approach for dealing with these issues. The Group Manager meets with each of the Building Control Units on a weekly basis to address any issues or needs, and to foster communication between Councils.

Services, Functions and Resources

The current focus of the group is to deliver on the vision by working together and with the building industry to improve what we do and how we do it. A key part of this is:

Working with the Building Industry Response Team (IRT) made up of both local government employees and key industry representatives in the local building industry. This industry group works together to improve consistency of work across the Waikato on both sides of the counter
Providing regional training and workshops for employees and for the industry
Common application forms and information
Joint marketing ventures

The group also collaborates in the development of quality assurance systems that meet the legislative requirements of the Building Consent Authority Regulations (BCA) 2006. The BCA regulations are being rolled out in three stages over the next five years. These regulations cover all aspects of building control functions including customer service, administration, plan processing, project inspections, competency assessment, resourcing, provision of training, quality assurance procedures, documentation and record keeping.

The Group offers each Council:

Advice and training in setting up and maintaining Quality Assurance (QA) systems
Joint training opportunities to assist teams in improving competency and managing the procedural changes
Access to shared documentation to improve systems across the group
Support and technical back-up
In-house training across the group
External competency and QA audits
Marketing opportunities

Read about Collaboration in the Waikato from the BCA Update - October 2010, pgs 6 - 9.
This article outlines how it started, the challenges they faced, lessons for other BCA's, and future BCA collaboration.