In my March 2021 blog I talked about the need for good quality product information as being critical for the effective operation of the consenting system and urged product suppliers to start improving (or in some cases starting the development of) product information to meet their obligations under section 14 (g) of the Building Act 2004 in anticipation of these becoming mandatory.

At that time of writing the nature of the regulations providing the detail of the requirements was not known, nor was the date at which they were to be implemented.

We now have more certainty about the nature of the obligations and the time frame for implementation.

Firstly, the implementation date is the 11th of December 2023 — that is right, 13 months away!

To understand the obligations, the section of the Building Act that is relevant is Part 4B which sets out the top level requirements.

The Regulations which have now been made provide more detail of what is required and MBIE is now developing more detailed guidance to support the implementation.

Product suppliers should now be conducting an initial audit or assessment of what they currently provide to support compliance of their products. An audit should consider the following factors:

• Does the information provide the relevant code clauses for which the product complies or contributes to compliance within its intended scope of use?
• Is the evidence base (acceptable solutions, Standards (referenced and not referenced), and other codes (both national and international) to support those claimed code clauses sufficiently robust and reliable?
• Are the manuals and documents available to support the compliant design, installation and maintenance of the products sufficient and provide clear and unambiguous instructions for each audience (designers, builders and owners)?
• Are the limitations of use are clearly stated?

Suppliers should also review their information infrastructure (website, document management systems etc.) to ensure that they can make the information available to the users of the information and ensure they have systems to ensure that the information is current, and it can be clearly identified as being relevant to the products being sold.