Design standards for school property

• Benefits of following design standards
• Meeting your responsibilities to follow the standards
• Three kinds of design standards
• Post occupancy evaluations (POEs) help improve future school designs
• Summary of design standards
• Having designs reviewed by the Design Review Panel

Benefits of following design standards

When you are building or upgrading a school building, you must comply with certain design standards. The reason for mandatory design standards is to:

• keep the building safe and fit for purpose
• provide the best physical environment for people using the school
• get the best long-term value for money from the new system or building
• protect the Government’s investment in school buildings.

Meeting your responsibilities to follow the standards

Much of the information in the standards is very technical. As a board of trustees, you are not expected to understand all of it. However, you do need to make sure any consultant or contractor you use is aware of the standards.

Direct your consultants and contractors to this page for more information.

Three kinds of design standards

The 3 kinds of design standards that you must consider in a building project are:

• legal requirements
• Ministry requirements
• best practice standards.

Legal requirements for a building project

All building work at schools must comply with:

• Building Act 2004 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• Building regulations (the New Zealand Building Code) (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment website)
• Resource Management Act 1991 (New Zealand Legislation website) and District Plans
• Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• Fire Service Act 1975 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• Fire Safety and Evacuation of Buildings Regulations 2006 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• Construction Contracts Act 2002 (New Zealand Legislation website)
• any other statutory building requirements.

The Building Code has ‘compliance’ documents that set out:

• acceptable methods for designing and constructing buildings
• performance specifications, which are the legal standards required to make a building safe for the people who use it and their neighbours.

Designers can use other design solutions. However, the standard they achieve must be the same as or higher than the performance specifications.

For more information and to download copies of the compliance documents, go to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment website .

Ministry requirements for a building project

Building work must meet our Ministry design standards. We have some mandatory requirements specifically for school buildings. In some cases, these standards are higher than the legal requirements. This acknowledges the unique nature of schools and the extra wear and tear on school buildings due to large numbers of people using them.

A key document detailing mandatory Ministry design standards is the  Structural and Geotechnical Guidelines for School Design .

Post occupancy evaluations help improve future school designs

We commission a post occupancy evaluation (POE) of all new builds and major school redevelopments. These evaluations help us improve future designs of schools. Reading past POE's can be helpful before starting a new build or major redevelopment at your school.

Go to the Post Occupancy Evaluation information.

Best practice standards for a building project

Not all the Ministry standards are mandatory. Some are ‘best practice’, which we recommend you follow to:

• extend the life of the buildings
• make them more comfortable for the people using them.

Summary of design standards

This table lists the design standards that apply to a school building project. It shows whether they are a legal requirement, Ministry requirement, best practice standard or a mixture of these.

Summary of standards for a school building project

Having designs reviewed by the Design Review Panel

We have set up the Design Review Panel (DRP) to do independent, high-level reviews of school development projects at various design stages. This affects all new schools and schools doing significant redevelopments where the project will cost $3 million or more.

The DRP will assist in the process of ensuring thatensure design teams are basing their work on the national standards and guidelines for school property design.

Panel members will do a high-level ‘snapshot’‘snap - shot’ appraisal of the design and use their extensive industry experience to raise questions and make suggestions.

As reviews are high-level, the focus is on consistency of approach towards school design looking at architecture/general building, geotechnical constraints/opportunities, structure, building services, and civil and infrastructure.