The Builder Wants to Substitute a Product. What Do I Need to Check Before I Agree?
$99.00 GST
The builder emails on a Friday. The specified membrane is on back order, here is an alternative, it is equal or better, can you approve it today? You say yes, the job keeps moving, and the responsibility for that product has just moved to you.
This one hour product substitution CPD course is for registered architects, project architects, contract administrators and specification writers. Building surveyors will find it useful too. Four short modules, two case studies and a ten question quiz, with your certificate saved to your dashboard.
Description
By the end of this course, you will be able to read a substitution request against the specification and the contract, test the evidence offered against the forms of evidence the National Construction Code accepts, see where a substituted product breaks a tested system, and write a decision that still protects you years after the job is finished. The organising idea is that approving a substitution transfers responsibility for that product to whoever approved it, so the question is never whether the alternative is equal or better but what the evidence actually proves. The course starts with what is driving the request and what the specification really required, who holds the authority to approve under the building contract, and why requests arrive late. It then works through evidence of suitability: certificates of conformity and their scope, conditions and currency, unabridged reports from Accredited Testing Laboratories and the specimen they describe, and product technical statements that state no basis. The third module shows where equivalence breaks, because performance belongs to tested systems: fire resisting construction, membranes and their substrates, glazing with more than one performance number, fixings in a corrosive environment, and the vapour path. The last module covers the written reply in five parts, conditional acceptance with conditions someone actually checks, telling the certifier and the consultants, declining accurately, and what goes on the file. Two case studies and ten practice scenarios close it out.
This CPD provides general guidance on professional responsibilities and documentation practices. It does not constitute legal advice or replace project-specific contractual or statutory obligations.
