Decades of building industry research at risk
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What is the purpose of New Zealand’s advanced fire and structural testing lab?
This is the sound of a large structure being lowered into a gigantic laboratory near Wellington to test how the steel connections perform in a fire. The lab's about the size of five netball courts, and you could pile five double-decker buses up inside it. And here's a simulation done for fens to demonstrate how fire spreads through a building. The fire lab opened just last year. It sounds like a jet engine and burns just as hot, reaching 1,350 degrees Celsius. It's one of the most advanced labs in the Southern Hemisphere and can test multi-storey buildings. When researchers, manufacturers, architects and designers come up with innovative building materials and systems this is where they get tested.
And this is the sound of timber under pressure in a hydraulic press. It's used to test load resistance, seismic, gravity, wind, snow and occupancy loads. All important stuff when it comes to building with materials and systems that will work and that you can trust to do the job, it says on the label. It's all happening at the Building Research Association's testing facility. Continuing work brands started in 1969. But for how much longer? I'm Alexia Russell and today on The Detail, a government move that would take the organisation's funding away and put it in the hands of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, or MBIE. This MBIE.
There are serious questions to be answered about MBIE's financial processes. Ministers have been misled and that the full cost of the project has not been raised forward to ministers. It's been a pattern of behaviour. so it is really disappointing to see that these things keep unravelling. As soon as we pull one thread, more and more unravels. Do you think someone needs to lose their job? Of
course you'd lose a job, they need to be put in prison as well. The government, under former Housing Minister Chris Penk, has made a swathe of changes, mainly aimed at streamlining systems and processes. The industry generally says they've been pretty positive.
Why are industry leaders opposed to repealing the Building Research Levy Act?
But this one change that would endanger the continuity of the work brands does on behalf of the building industry has been given the unanimous thumbs down. It's the repeal of the Building Research Levy Act. Not in place yet. It's been kicked out till after the election. But builders say they trust brands to do important and independent research and they want the levy to stay. Julian Lays is the CEO of the Building Industry Federation.
Obviously, the Building Industry Federation, we look after products in particular and materials. We represent the building supply chain, so that's manufacturers, importers, distributors and merchants. You know, these products then in turn make up the fabric of every New Zealand building, so that's homes, commercial, everything. And that whole system, I mean, is ultimately based on degrees of trust and underpinning that trust is research and particularly independent research. So I guess in looking at this, we have some concerns because this proposal to repeal the Building Research Levy Act, I think goes against the grain of that independence by bringing everything then within who already controls and collects the building levy.
All those investment decisions then are under one government agency and we lose that degree of independent research that really has built up the foundation of science around our product information.
I would have thought that anything that reduces your costs would have been welcome, but obviously in this case you feel that doesn't balance out.
No, I don't actually, because the government has told us that, or NB said that this proposal would save a homeowner $65. So to put this into perspective, the amount that's raised is basically $1 for every $1,000 that's spent. So on most projects, on average, let's say half a million dollars, the homeowner's contributing $500. I don't think many people would question $65 if it meant that they, you know, because this is all about trust again and the certainty of knowing that you've got products that actually work and perform that they should because there's been research that's been done into them by brands.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the purpose of New Zealand’s advanced fire and structural testing lab?
0:05–2:24
2
Why are industry leaders opposed to repealing the Building Research Levy Act?
2:24–5:25
3
How would moving the levy under MBIE affect the independence of building research?
5:25–8:03
4
What lessons does the Grenfell Tower disaster teach about independent testing?
8:03–10:32
5
How does the current levy model protect homeowners and the construction sector?
10:32–13:46
6
What are the risks of losing long‑term, longitudinal research on building materials?
13:46–16:14
7
How could contestable funding undermine the quality of building‑product certification?
16:14–19:01
8
What actions can the industry take before the next election to safeguard the levy?
19:01–21:44