A year ago there were about 11,000 professionals enrolled in the Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP) scheme. That figure has since more than doubled, with the current total sitting at around 22,000.

This is due to changes in the Building Code which came into effect last year, making it compulsory for practitioners carrying out restricted residential building work to be licensed. However, aspects of the scheme, which was originally introduced in a voluntary context five years ago, have come under fire in the last few months, and significant changes are on the horizon.

While a review of the scheme is underway, and changes are implemented in the short-term, the wider industry continues to discuss the potential for an improved, more collaborative system surrounding professional development and skills maintenance.

NZIOB Northern Chapter board member, Associate Professor Dr Linda Kestle, who delivers construction management courses at Unitec on the Bachelor of Construction programme, said the importance of having strong industry-wide continued professional development programmes was considered paramount by Unitec and the NZIOB. “If you are a registered engineer or architect you have to accrue a certain number of CPD points or hours every year.

As professionals in construction we have similar CPD programmes and yearly minimum credit requirements, but as yet we don’t have an industry-wide requirement for annual practicing certificates,” she said. “We (the NZIOB) thought it was really important to have a CPD programme, and since April 2010 that programme has been mandatory for all members. We are now in the process of auditing and monitoring it. What we are trying to do is re-align ourselves with related professional institutes in New Zealand.” Dr Kestle said work was currently underway to establish which parts of the NZIOB continued professional development (CPD) scheme were in line with the LBP scheme in order to enable the transfer of credits/points.

“More alignment is needed, so if, for example, NZIOB members attend a seminar run by another institution or organisation, they know they will receive a certain number of NZIOB credits, and so forth. It’s something we have been doing in an ad hoc fashion until now. We also have strong links with the Australian Institute of Building (AIB), and one of the ideas going forward is to share research and rationalise CPD programmes to suit New Zealand conditions and vice versa.”

Collaboration such as this is key to streamlining professional development in New Zealand’s construction sector in the future, Dr Kestle said. “We are told by governmental organisations we have quite low productivity in the construction sector. Integration and collaboration, especially with skills maintenance and professional development, benefits everyone; stakeholders, the client, and the organisations that are prepared to work together. It’s about getting everybody around the table from day one, and on the same page.”

Chair of industry peak body the New Zealand Construction Industry Council, Pieter Burghout, said the research and industry engagement done around skills in the building and construction sector verified the need for improved business and project management skills, both on and off site. “So, as well as gearing up the numbers of people doing trades within the industry as we cope with demand in Christchurch and Auckland, we need to be up-skilling the managerial level as well.”

But Mr Burghout also believes the life-long learning philosophy has been slow to penetrate New Zealand. “It’s finally the construction industry’s turn to grasp that particular nettle,” he said. “The shift is coming. There is no way you can survive as an industry practitioner at any level without continuing to grow your skills and abilities. As the construction sector becomes more complex and the regulatory environment places even greater onus on builders and designers, continuous up-skilling will be essential in order to keep abreast of developments. “It’s also likely going forward, that we will see industry bodies coordinate their CPD more so that the training and up-skilling on offer is much more integrated than we see currently.”

New Zealand Green Building Council CEO Alex Cutler said continuous learning was part of progress, and the identification of improved ways of designing and delivering the sort of built environment New Zealanders desired was part of that progress. “Integrating new methods of construction, evaluating the advantages of new technologies, and using an integrated design approach to increase efficacy and improve productivity should deliver an improved outcome as well as an increasingly up-skilled workforce,” Ms Cutler said.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Building Practitioners Licensing Group manager Mark Scully said the LBP scheme, which incorporated those completing restricted residential building work only, required all LBPs to maintain their skills and knowledge by acquiring a specific number of skills maintenance points every two years, and submitting details of these to the registrar for approval and re-licensing.

However, Mr Scully said the Ministry was in the process of conducting a review of the scheme, with recommendations from the review expected in early 2013. “It’s a huge step for people who feel like their education ended 30 years ago to get into a frame of mind that says learning is a life-long thing,” he said. And that has not been the only barrier for the scheme in its infancy. Mr Scully said other teething problems were in the process of being resolved. He said a certain leniency had been afforded to those enrolled in the scheme until mid-2012, and they had not been required to adhere to the scheme’s regulations.

“Until March 2012 it was a choice to be licenced or not. We didn’t want to get into a situation where we were declining licence renewals to people because they didn’t have enough points,” Mr Scully said. “It was always the intention to tighten things up a bit. By about May [2012] we knew there were a lot of people in the scheme and it was time to change things. Now the scheme is up and running we will be taking a much firmer view about completion of the required number of points in the two-year period,” Mr Scully said. “People’s licences will be suspended if they do not participate in the required number of activities. So far we have been helping people along, talking it through, whereas actually the obligation is on the LBP, and it is not a particularly onerous obligation.”

Mr Scully said he did not know what recommendations to expect from the review of the scheme, but said it would answer questions related to the best ways to develop skills maintenance, audit processes, and what should be achieved with skills maintenance in the future. “I don’t know what the recommendations will be, but I do know the review will look at other industry models,” he said. “We know at a broad level that productivity and performance in the sector need to improve, and ongoing learning is a part of that.”