Earthquake-prone building system changes announced

These changes are designed to better target buildings that pose the greatest risk to life safety, while reducing costs to building owners and disruption, particularly in regional communities.

This targeted approach is expected to save building owners approximately $8.2 billion in retrofit costs while ensuring life safety risk in the most vulnerable buildings is addressed.

A bill containing the proposed changes is expected to be introduced in the coming months. The proposed changes include:

• Removing low risk buildings and buildings in low seismic zones (Auckland, Northland and the Chatham Islands) from the EPB system.
• Introducing tiered risk mitigation requirements, making use of new engineering methodologies, based on location and building type. 
• Allowing building owners to apply for deadline extensions, to encourage incremental progress.
• Reducing barriers to seismic strengthening by removing the requirement for concurrent fire and accessibility upgrades.

By focusing on higher seismic risk areas and adopting modern engineering methodologies, the updated system will deliver more cost-effective solutions.

The Government’s cabinet paper, reports, and supporting analysis are now available on the MBIE website: 

Proposed changes to the earthquake-prone building (EPB) system — mbie.govt.nz

Earthquake-prone building and seismic risk management review — mbie.govt.nz