Property design standards and legal requirements

All school building projects must comply with legal and Ministry design standards and should follow best practice standards. Boards of trustees must make sure that any consultant or contractor they use for a project is aware of the standards.

Large projects will be reviewed by our Design Review Panel to ensure designs meet the national standards and guidelines. We also commission a post occupancy evaluation of all new builds and major school redevelopments to help improve future designs.

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.

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.

	Legal requirement	Ministry requirement	Best practice
Accessibility design for people with special needs		Yes
Acoustics (Designing quality learning spaces)		Yes	Yes
Air quality (Designing quality learning spaces)		Yes	Yes
Assistive equipment (hoists)			Yes
Automatic doors			Yes
Bathroom and toilet design for people with special needs			Yes
Bilingual signs			Yes
Chromated copper arsenate treated timber			Yes
Education Infrastructure Design Guidance Documents	Yes	Yes	Yes
Energy design		Yes
Fencing	Yes		Yes
Fire safety design	Yes	Yes
Floor coverings			Yes
Glass replacement		Yes
Heating, temperature and ventilation (Designing quality learning spaces)		Yes	Yes
Joinery and hardware			Yes
Learning spaces			Yes
Lifts in school buildings	Yes	Yes
Lighting (Designing quality learning spaces)		Yes	Yes
Roofing			Yes
Security design		Yes
Shade			Yes
Socket outlets and lighting circuits		Yes
Sprinkler systems in schools		Yes
Standard classroom block upgrade reference design			Yes
Structural and Geotechnical Guidelines		Yes
Toilets	Yes
Translucent plastic sheeting		Yes
Weathertightness design	Yes	Yes

Legal requirements

All building work at schools must comply with:

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 (external link) .

Ministry requirements

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.

The Education Infrastructure Design Guidance Documents outline the Ministry's national guidelines for school property design. These documents give design teams working at schools a clear and consistent understanding of Ministry’s requirements, guidelines and high level processes.

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

Best practice standards

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.

Design review panel

The Design Review Panel (DRP) does 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 that design teams are basing their work on the national standards and guidelines for school property design.

Panel members will do a high-level ‘snapshot’ 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.

If you want to know more about the DRP, contact your property advisor (external link) .

An overview of the review process [PDF, 1 MB]

Post occupancy evaluations

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.

Post occupancy evaluations (POE) of school building projects

Last reviewed: 28 February 2020 Has this been useful? Give us your feedback