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Building Act 2004
10Meaning of basic building work
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10 Meaning of basic building work
basic building work—
(a) means the following building work:
(i) erecting a prefabricated class 10a building;
(ii) erecting a class 10a outbuilding;
(iii) installing fireplaces or solid-fuel heaters;
(iv) non-structural work; but
(b) does not include specialist building work.
(2) In subsection (1):
non-structural work—
(a) means work on a part of a building that does not, or is not
intended to, carry a structural load imposed or transmitted by
another part of a building; and
(b) includes work on non-load bearing walls, doors, partitioning,
reticulated pipework, ventilation ductwork and building fit-out
items; but
(c) does not include the following work:
(i) work that may affect the structural integrity of a structural
element of a building, or weaken or remove, completely or
partly, the structural element, if the element is installed in
a way that it carries, or can carry, a load of part of a
building;
(ii) work that involves the use of a structural element to carry,
or to possibly carry, a structural load of part of a building.
Example for par (c) (i)
work that affects the existing bracing beams on a multi-storey car park
if the bracing beams are designed to bear wind load, even though most
of the time they do not carry any load
Examples for par (c) (ii)
1 the installation of a new storey on a building
2 underpinning a subsiding building
(3) The regulations may—
(a) exempt a kind of work from the definition of basic building
work; or
(b) include a kind of work in the definition of basic building work.