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CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 3

PROCESS BEFORE BUILDING:

Last year I was hired to build a home with my dad who has been a certified builder for many years now. I was hired under him as an apprentice so he was set to teach me as much as he could. I was unaware of what how how the building process would begin. My dad told me first step was to ensure you had all legal documentation to begin construction, as without these documents no construction was legally allowed to proceed. So I set my self a task to research all the documentation required and to study each one so I would know about this situation further along my carrier in building.

 

Here are some typical content of a home building contract:

• Names of all parties
• Addresses of all parties
• Phone, fax, email contacts and procedures
• Date of contract
• Property description
• Street address
• Subdivision
• Homeowners association
• Amount of contract
• Terms of financing
• Construction draw schedule
• Construction draw procedure
• Insurance requirements
• Start date and definition
• Substantial completion date and definition
• Plans, drawings, blueprints, sketches
• Specifications - as complete as possible
• Substitution policy
• Allowances - including labor and/or material
• Change order procedures and pricing
• Exclusions to the contract
• Authorized delay conditions
• Penalties or fines
• Access to the construction site
• Owner, lender, and third party inspection procedures
• Methods to solve disputes
• Arbitration clause
• Settlement terms
• Formal notification times and procedures
• Warranties and service policies
• Any documents required by state or local laws
• Signatures and dates of all parties on every page of every document with original copies for all signing parties
• Witness to all signatures

• And anything else about which two or more people can disagree, misunderstand, fail to do, install improperly, overlook, ignore, or that otherwise might create a problem between any or all of the aforementioned parties.
• WITNESSETH, the party of the first part hereafter known as owner, and the party of the second part, hereafter known as contractor that have here today placed their hands and seals on this document have hereby agreed to just be friends, get along nicely with each other at all times, expect only what is reasonable of each other, neither charge too much nor pay too little for services rendered, and build the perfect house on schedule and under budget.

Once I had an understanding of what was required of the documentation I had more of an understanding of what was involved with building. Once my dad had passes all documents needed we began work. And 4 months later we had made a brand new house without and trouble or injuries.

CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2

PROPERTY LINES:

Before construction my boss and I had made a plan to extend his deck. we had begun building when we realised our deck was too close to the fence which was not meant to happen as we worked out according to the property plan that the fence would be a fair distance away. When we looked back at the plan thinking the deck measurements would be wrong we found out that the border line was a few meters into our property and we could further move the fence.

So we decided to ensure that this was correct and we had a talk with the council who sent a professional surveyor to our property line and ensured us that we could legally move our fence back another few meters. So we put our deck on hold and decided to move the fence back.

Some conflict arose when our neighbours were asking what we were doing but we had informed that the fence would need to be moved back as we were legally eligible to do so. We had the property form as well as documentation given by the property surveyor as proof that we in fact were allowed to do this. Our neighbour had nothing to argue about once he had seen this proof and was very understanding of our situation. We had finished the fence and proceeded onto finishing the remainder of the deck.

construction documentation and communication

WHEN PLANS GO WRONG:

Last summer my boss and I had planned to work on his new deck and extend it. we had given the architect a fair idea of what design we needed and also the measurements of the current deck and also the measurements of the new deck.

Once we had gotten the finished plans for our new deck we began to order the materials looking at the new plans we figured the plans were correct.

After ordering we finally got delivered the decking materials we needed. The next day my boss and I began working on the deck. When putting the piles up we had realised that the deck wasn’t the same length as what we had imagined but was a couple meters too short. We had a closer look at the measurements and realised the decking measurements was 1.5 meters too short length ways therefore we had to add another 1.5 meters length ways to the deck from top to bottom.

We rang our architect who was actually a close friend to my boss. We had a look at our old plan my boss and I had made and everything was in order. The architect had misread my bosses hand writing and had put up the wrong measurements. He was very apologetic and made us another plan which didn’t take that long.

This wasn’t a big deal but just meant we had to wait a few more days to begin our construction and that we had to order more materials.

This problem could also be blamed upon my boss as we should have ensured that our old plans matched with our new plans before ordering the materials.

COMPLIANCE DOCUMENTS

A Compliance Document is one way of establishing compliance with a particular clause of the New Zealand Building Code. A design that complies with a Compliance Document must be accepted as complying with the provisions of the Building Code to which the Compliance Document relates. However, complying with a Compliance Document is not the only means of complying with the Building Code. There may be alternative ways to comply with the Building Code. NZS 3604 is one way of meeting the NZBC structural requirements. It is not the only way – Alternative Solutions are often applied. Following the requirements in NZS 3604 enables a house to be designed without the need for specific engineering design. NZS 3604 is a cost-effective solution that can be applied when designing a house. Providing your design complies with NZS 3604, building consent authorities are required to accept the design as complying with the NZBC structural requirements, and must issue a building consent. There are limitations to NZS 3604. Today's consumers often have expectations that cannot be met within the scope of NZS 3604. For example, many houses today have extra-large rooms that often have joist or rafter spans that fall outside the scope of NZS 3604. Another example is the design of trusses, which is also outside the scope of NZS 3604 and requires specific engineering design.
Providing a design complies with the requirements specified in NZS 3604, specific engineering design calculation or other design justification is not required. However, today's houses are often only partially designed using NZS 3604. For the parts of the design that don't follow NZS 3604, design justification would be required. For example, many houses today use a proprietary concrete slab system instead of the traditional slab-on-ground system that is in NZS 3604. Some of the issues in compliance requirements for houses are the designed plans, it may not meet the building standards. The owner might want a design that is complex and might require some changes to the actual building and construction of the house itself, for example the roof the rafter spans that fall outside scope of NZS 3604. It will require a lot of forms to be filled in and the council will have to approve with the plans or the construction will not continue. you can also download compliance documents. The Department of Building and Housing may amend or replace the whole, or any part of, any Compliance Document at any time. The Department publicises amendments through its publications codewords and Building Controls Update. Therefore if you wish to download a compliance document you should first check the record of amendments for that compliance document on a regular basis.

lack of judgement

A few years back while on a worksite a new apprentice was hired by an experienced builder to join his team. He had done a year of carpentry at unitec and had gotten his certificate in applied technology. He had known the basics of carpentry but still had a long way to go before he could really know everything.

While on his first few weeks on the job the new apprentice was asked by his employer if he had done gibing before, with that the apprentice replied yes. Not fully understanding or asking the apprentice of how much knowledge he actually had of gibbing the employee convinced himself to think the new apprentice knew everything he had to know about gibbing. Alot of the gibbing had been done and only a couple more had been left to do. This was teh apprentices first go at gibbing with his new boss. Instructed by his boss the new apprentice was asked to gib a section of the house. The apprentice said he knew what he was meant to do and continued to do the gibbing. When the employer returned he saw that the gibbing fasteners were put on wrongly. instead of having the fasteners placed at 150mm centres around the the bracing element perimeter starting at 50, 100, and 150mm from the bracing element corner , the apprentice had screwed the fastners on with a 30 mm spacing and on each corner and stud.

Although having to take out all the screws out and re doing the gibbing it wasn’t entirely the apprentices fault. The employer has hired an apprentice very well knowing that he has not got much experience and must supervise and teach his new apprentice. So therefore the employer should have infact been helping the apprentice gib the board and teaching him about proper spacing.this is where the apprentice should also take initiative and write down notes so he can later on look back and remember what he needs to do.

TREES OVERHANGING ONTO A BUILDING SITE

In this scenario a new owner has hired contractors to extend his building but cannot due to his neighbours OAK tree over hanging  onto his property. the tree trunk stands completely on property A, (tree owner) person's land, the branches project over onto property B (doing renovations) person's land. When the building plans were made a few months ago the designer forgot to take the tree into consideration.

This problem was noticed when the builders began to build and looking at the plans they knew that the tree would get in the way while building and wouldn’t be safe for the builders to build. the builders plans shows the tree will not affect the building itself but the builders will have trouble building around it without it being a dangerous concern. the builders have asked the owner of property B to sort out the overhanging tree before work can commence.

  
    Here is what the owner of property B can do: If the roots or branches of your neighbour’s tree encroach on your
  

land, you can cut them back to the boundary line. If you do not want to do this yourself, you can ask a district court for an order for the trimming or even removal of the tree. You must not poison the roots or spray the tree with herbicide, as the consequences would extend beyond your property. If you are cutting out part of the tree's roots, take care not to undermine the stability of the tree or the ground around it.