The Safety Services Division of the Government of Nunavut’s Dept. of Community & Government Services (CGS) would like to pass on the following information to the A&E and Builder Community to keep the community abreast of certain issues that are of concern to all.

As you know, the Nunavut Legislature passed in 2012 the “Building Code Act” (BCA). This Act requires that a regulatory system for the regulation of the building sector in Nunavut be brought into existence.

As part of the CGS effort to implement this regulatory system, it was identified that a consolidation of the assets of the government that are involved in regulatory activities was called for, this was especially important with the upcoming addition of the new regulatory regime required to meet the BCA requirements. With that in mind, a
new CGS Division was created. The new Division, called “Safety Services”, brings the existing GN safety inspections groups (the Office of the Fire Marshall and the Safety Services section of the Protection Services Division) into a dedicated Division inside the CGS structure and provides a home for the future BCA enforcement group.

This will provide the A&E and Builder Community with a “one stop shop” approach to the regulatory functions for the “Electrical Systems”, “Boiler & Pressure Vessels”, “Combustible Gas Systems”, “Lifting Device Systems (Elevators)”, “The Office of the Fire Marshal” and the still to be implemented “Chief Building Official’s Office”
disciplines.

As part of the integration of the new Chief Building Official’s Office into the Division, a project was initiated where the various pieces of legislation and regulations (namely the Fire Protection Act, the Technical Standards and Safety Act and the Building Code Act) that the inspectors of the Division enforce, will be modernized and brought into synergy with each other. The end result will be that, subject to approval by the Legislative Assembly, these Acts will all have a modern, efficient, fair and transparent methodology for an appeals process, a manner to proactively solicit (through the formation of an Advisory Committee) advice from the regulated industry and that the Acts will support the migration of our enforcement efforts to that of a risk management approach.

The proposed amendments to the legislation is working its way through the legislative process now and hopefully will be completed before Spring of 2017 with Regulations to follow soon after.

So what does this mean for the A&E and Builder community? Well, Nunavut may soon have a regulatory regime in place for the identified disciplines that will be…

Fair ‐ Consistent ‐ Transparent ‐ Efficient ‐ Has an Identified Dispute Handling System ‐ Has an Advisory Committee in Place ‐ Implements a Risk Management Approach

It is anticipated that the fully functioning Chief Building Official’s Office will be positioned such that it will be able to start issuing Nunavut Building Permits for all construction activity in Nunavut and to be able to conduct “boots on the ground inspections” by January of 2018.

As noted above, these amendments are subject to approval by the Legislative Assembly. As they have not worked through the legislative process fully yet, hard details on the adoption of the NBCC along with any Nunavut amendments is too early to talk about, but it would be fair to suggest to the A&E and Builder community that they need to prepare for… formal plan reviews by the Building Code group, the application for and the issuing of Building Permits and compliance to the 2015 NBCC as of January of 2018.

Feel free to contact the undersigned for further details…

Best Regards…

Richard J Kelly, CCEI
Director, Safety Services & Chief Electrical Inspector
Safety Services
Dept. of Community & Government Services
Government of Nunavut
rkelly@gov.nu.ca
V 867-975-5419  F 867-975-5453  C 867-222-0209
Safety Services
PO Box 1000, Station 610, Iqaluit, NU  X0A 0H0