We spend a lot of this site explaining that test and tag is not legally required in New Zealand. Specified systems are the other side of that coin, and the contrast is worth understanding properly, because the obligation that genuinely is the law tends to get less attention than the one that is not.
Why the concept exists
Most of a building looks after itself. Walls stay up. Doors keep working.
But some systems only matter on the worst day, and they are exactly the systems that degrade invisibly in the meantime. An emergency light with a dead battery looks identical to one with a good battery. A smoke control system that will not start looks identical to one that will. A sprinkler valve closed during maintenance three years ago looks like a sprinkler valve.
The Building Act's answer is to name those systems, require that they are inspected and maintained on a defined schedule, and require the owner to certify annually that it has been done. That is the whole architecture.
The full list
Under the Building Act 2004, all buildings other than single residential buildings require a compliance schedule and an annual BWoF if they contain any of these:
| # | Specified system |
|---|---|
| 1 | Automatic systems for fire suppression — sprinklers and similar |
| 2 | Automatic or manual emergency warning systems for fire or other dangers |
| 3 | Electromagnetic or automatic doors or windows |
| 4 | Emergency lighting systems |
| 5 | Escape route pressurisation systems |
| 6 | Riser mains for use by fire services |
| 7 | Automatic backflow preventers connected to a potable water supply |
| 8 | Lifts, escalators, travelators and other systems for moving people or goods |
| 9 | Mechanical ventilation or air conditioning systems |
| 10 | Building maintenance units providing access to exterior and interior walls |
| 11 | Laboratory fume cupboards |
| 12 | Audio loops and other assistive listening systems |
| 13 | Smoke control systems |
| 14 | Emergency power systems for, or signs relating to, systems 1–13 |
| 15 | Certain means-of-escape features — spoken-information systems, final exits, fire separations, evacuation signs and smoke separations — where the building also contains particular other specified systems |
A warning system for fire that is entirely within one household unit and serves only that unit is excluded from system 2. And any building with a cable car needs a compliance schedule, including a single residential building — the one exception people find surprising.
Emergency lighting is system 4
For our purposes this is the important row, and it is where most building owners' attention should sit, because emergency lighting is present in far more buildings than sprinklers or smoke control.
Note also system 14: emergency power systems for other specified systems, and signs relating to them. Exit signage frequently sits here rather than under system 4, which is one reason the fitting count on a schedule does not always match what a maintenance contractor thinks they are testing.
The practical consequence: if emergency lighting is on your compliance schedule, maintaining and testing it is a legal obligation under the Building Act. Not best practice. Not industry convention. The law, enforceable with or without an incident.
That is a genuinely different footing from portable appliance testing, and it is worth making sure whoever holds the budget understands the difference.
What having one triggers
Four things follow from having any specified system.
A compliance schedule. Issued by the council with the code compliance certificate for new buildings. For an existing building that has systems but no schedule — which happens — the owner must apply for one.
A compliance schedule statement, displayed publicly in the building for its first 12 months, usually in the foyer.
Inspection, maintenance and reporting procedures carried out as the schedule specifies, some by the owner and the more complex ones by an Independent Qualified Person.
An annual Building Warrant of Fitness, supplied to the territorial authority and publicly displayed, supported by a Form 12A from each IQP.
The compliance schedule is the operative document
If you take one thing from this page, take this.
The list above tells you whether you are in the regime. It does not tell you what you have to do. Your compliance schedule does that, and each one is different depending on the systems in that particular building and the standards it was signed off against.
The schedule states, for each system: the performance standard, the inspection and maintenance procedures, the frequency, who must carry them out, and the reporting requirements. Records commonly have to be retained with the schedule for the previous 24 months and kept on site.
Buildings get into trouble not by misunderstanding the Building Act but by never reading the document the council sent them. If you do not have yours, request a copy from your territorial authority today. It is free.
Penalties, and why they are not the real risk
For completeness, because people ask, and because the numbers are larger than most owners expect.
Building owners can be prosecuted or fined for failing to obtain a compliance schedule, failing to supply a BWoF, failing to display one, or displaying a false or misleading one. Those offences carry a maximum fine of $20,000, and failing to obtain a compliance schedule carries a further $2,000 for every day without one. Councils can issue instant fines from $250 to $1,000.
A council can also issue a notice to fix where a BWoF is incorrect or where the schedule's procedures are not being complied with. Failing to correct that is where it escalates: a maximum fine of $200,000, plus $20,000 for each day the offence continues.
Using or permitting the use of a building that is dangerous, insanitary, or has inadequate means of escape from fire carries a fine of up to $100,000, with a further $10,000 for every day it continues.
The realistic risk for most owners is not prosecution. It is insurance. MBIE explicitly encourages owners to review their policies to understand the effect of not supplying a BWoF, and to contact their provider. A building operating without a current BWoF, with a fire, and an insurer asking questions, is a considerably worse position than a fine.
The second realistic risk is a sale. A missing or lapsed BWoF is one of the first things a purchaser's due diligence looks at, and it moves price.
If you have just bought a building
This is the situation we are called into most often, and there is a sequence that works.
- Get the compliance schedule from the council. Not from the vendor — from the council, so you know it is the current one.
- Get the current BWoF and the previous two years' Form 12As. Gaps here tell you what you have inherited.
- Get the logbook. If it does not exist, you have a records problem starting now, not at the next BWoF.
- Walk the building against the schedule. Count the fittings. Find the systems. Buildings and schedules drift apart after every fitout.
- Identify who the IQPs are and whether they are still engaged. Vendors' arrangements do not transfer automatically.
- Diarise everything for the next 12 months, including the owner-carried-out checks, before the first one is due.
Steps 3 and 4 are the ones that find problems, and finding them in your first month is a completely different situation from finding them the week the BWoF is due.
Related: what an IQP is, emergency lighting and your BWoF, and why buildings fail emergency lighting.