Time-sensitive
Your Building Warrant of Fitness has expired
The warrant in the lobby is out of date, or the anniversary has been and gone.
What to do
- 01
Find your compliance schedule
It lists every specified system in the building and the procedures each one needs. If you cannot find it, your council holds a copy. Everything below depends on knowing what is on it.
- 02
Work out what was actually done in the last 12 months
Not what was invoiced — what was done. Which systems were inspected, by whom, and is there a signed report for each.
- 03
Get the outstanding procedures completed
For every system where procedures were missed or are overdue. This is usually the part that takes the longest, because it depends on contractor availability.
- 04
Collect a Form 12A for each specified system
Issued by the IQP who carried out or supervised the procedures for that system.
- 05
Sign the Form 12 and supply it to your council
With every Form 12A attached, and display a copy publicly in the building.
First, the thing you probably want to know
An expired warrant is not usually a prosecution. It is usually a letter.
Councils generally start with contact and a deadline, because their objective is a compliant building rather than a fine. The serious consequences attach further down the track — to ignoring a notice to fix, or to displaying a warrant that is false.
So the position is recoverable. What matters is that you start moving, and that nobody signs anything that is not true.
What not to do
Do not ask anyone to backdate a certificate. Section 108A makes it an offence for an IQP to certify that procedures were complied with when they were not, carrying a maximum fine of $50,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a company. An IQP who agrees to it has not solved your problem; they have created a false record on your building, which is considerably worse than a late warrant.
Do not assume the tenant has dealt with it. Under section 108 the duty sits with the owner. A tenant’s occupation, however large the tenant, does not transfer it.
Where it usually went wrong
Almost never the fire systems. Nearly always the calendar — a contractor changed, a quarterly check was missed, one trade’s report never arrived, and the anniversary came around with the set incomplete.
Under section 108(3), the certificates attached to a warrant have to certify, considered together, that every procedure was fully complied with. One missing system means the set is incomplete, however good the other eleven certificates are.
If procedures were genuinely missed
Then a Form 12A cannot honestly be issued for that system, and no amount of goodwill changes that. There is a defined path for this situation involving a declaration rather than a certificate, and the detail of it varies by council.
That is worth a conversation rather than a web page. Call us and we will tell you where you stand, including if the answer is that you do not need us.
What we can do
Establish what is outstanding, get the work done, chase the other trades, assemble the set, and get the warrant supplied. If your building is in the Bay of Plenty or Waikato we can usually be on site quickly, and we can price the remedial work from your compliance schedule before we start.