Building pressure over supply shortages

With building materials in short supply, builders are being forced to amend consents to include products that are readily available.

Selwyn District Council manager of environmental and regulatory services Tim Harris said the number of applications for consent amendments had doubled since December 2020.

Harris said it was ‘‘not the full picture’’ of the shortages as it didn’t include cases where builders have gone ahead with changes without an application.

‘‘And that’s something our inspectors are seeing regularly.’’

Under the law inspectors need to assess if the amended work still complied with the building code, he said.

‘‘If it does not, it can become costly and time-consuming and require builders to redo work.’’

Master Builders chief executive David Kelly said much of the manufacturing, construction and distribution of building materials come out of Auckland, but that had been halted during lockdown until employees returned to work on Wednesday when the city went to alert level 3.

Coupled with a ‘‘once in 20 year’’ building boom where demand for new homes had increased by up to 40 per cent, as well as a disrupted international supply chain, this has led to a drop in productivity, Kelly said.

‘‘There’s a capacity constraint generally. These lockdowns are incredibly disruptive.’’

Kelly said most manufacturers didn’t carry stockpiles of materials, meaning there would be a catch-up period.

Transport from Auckland had also proved problematic with the city on a different alert level to the rest of the country.

With the costs of materials rising, Kelly urged building contractors to be careful to price their jobs realistically, so they did not get ‘‘trapped’’ and lose out financially.

Christchurch plumber Mark Whitehead of Whitehead Plumbing and Gas said the Government’s handling of the Auckland boundaries had caused significant supply shortages.

Even though plumbing was an essential industry, products had not been allowed to be transported out of the city, he said.

‘‘Someone like Foodstuffs can shift food out of Auckland, but we can’t transport building materials.’’

Manufacturers were unable to produce auxiliary items such as hot water cylinders or pipes.

Earlier this month the Government announced a change would be made to the Health Order to enable selected building construction manufacturers in Auckland to return to work when the region was still in level 4.

The change was designed to help increase stocks of plasterboard, gypsum plaster, coated roofing steel, and insulation, but Whitehead said it was futile.

‘‘You can get pink batts and plasterboard, but it’s a bit like that advertisement on television where someone has a garage door, but they haven’t got a garage.’’

Whitehead said there were builders and plumbers waiting until next year for framing timber because of shortages. ‘‘If you can’t keep the work going, it might mean that you are going to have to stand staff down for a period of time.’’

Duncan Taylor of Duncan Taylor Builders said structural building materials could generally be sourced, but auxiliary materials for inside the home were slow arriving from the North Island.

Taylor said a house they were reroofing would not be finished until roofing coils arrived at the end of January.

However, as their projects generally took two to three years, they had the bulk of their materials on hand.

‘‘Fortunately, we’ve been around long enough that we can generally secure what we need.’’

‘‘You can get pink batts and plasterboard, but it’s a bit like that advertisement on television where someone has a garage door, but they haven’t got a garage.’’

Mark Whitehead

Christchurch plumber