By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What goes wrong when a gasfitter treats a leak, a flue issue or a carbon monoxide risk as just a technical job?
A gas leak, a faulty flue or a carbon monoxide risk is never only a technical fault, it is a workplace hazard, and a gasfitting business owner who only thinks about fixing the appliance in front of them can miss the wider duty that sits on the business itself. In New Zealand, the business, not only the tradesperson on the tools, carries that risk.
Most gasfitters are trained to find and fix the technical problem, the pressure test that fails, the heater that is not venting properly, the hot water unit with a cracked heat exchanger. What a trade business owner can miss is that the fix itself sits inside a wider set of duties that belong to the business, and to the owner personally.
What does the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 require of you as the business owner?
As the owner of a gasfitting business, you are the PCBU, the business or undertaking the law is concerned with, and a PCBU may be an individual person running alone or a larger company. WorkSafe New Zealand says a PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of your workers and anyone else your work could put at risk, which covers customers, their household and anyone on site while gas work is underway.
WorkSafe's guide to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 explains that officers, which includes you as owner, must exercise due diligence to make sure the business meets its obligations: keeping your own knowledge current, understanding the specific hazards in gas work, and making sure the business has resources and processes to manage them, not just hoping the apprentice remembers.
WorkSafe's page on safe use of machinery sets out the same core duty for any PCBU: try to eliminate a risk first, and where that is not reasonably practicable, minimise it. It also says a PCBU must engage with workers on health and safety matters that affect them and give them real chances to take part in improving safety, not just a toolbox talk once a year.
If a notifiable event happens on a job, a serious injury, an illness, or an incident such as gas or steam escaping, WorkSafe's guide on what events need to be notified says the PCBU must notify the regulator as soon as possible and preserve the site, with limited exceptions such as helping an injured person or making the area safe.
What do the gas safety regulations and your gasfitting licence require on every job?
Separate from the general health and safety duties, you carry specific duties under gas safety law and under your licence: work has to be done so it is safe for its intended use, and you need the right licence in place, personally or through staff you authorise, before gasfitting work goes ahead.
The Gas (Safety and Measurement) Regulations 2010 say a person who designs, installs, manufactures or maintains a gas installation, appliance or fitting must ensure it is safe when used for its intended purpose, and that the installation must remain safe even when it is turned off or decommissioned. The same regulations say nobody, including you as owner, may use, or let a customer use, a part of a gas installation that is unsafe.
WorkSafe's page on design and construction of gas installations says a gas installation has to be designed, installed, commissioned or tested in line with the AS/NZS 5601.1 standard, and that the people doing that work must ensure the result is safe.
On licensing, the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006 says a registered person cannot do gasfitting work without a current practising licence. If you run the business, an employer licence lets you authorise your employees to carry out gasfitting on your behalf, and that authority is enough for them to do the work, which matters for how you structure your crew and who is allowed to sign off a job.
What compliance certificates and records do you need to keep, and why?
All gasfitting connected since certification began needs certification: you, or the person responsible for the work, has to issue a Gas Safety Certificate once gas is connected, and general or high-risk gasfitting is not finished, legally, until a Certificate of Compliance has also been issued.
WorkSafe's page on getting gas work done explains that a Gas Safety Certificate must show the installation is safe to use and that the work has not affected any other part of the gas installation, and it has to be issued within a set window after connection, which the page keeps current. High-risk and general-risk work also needs a Certificate of Compliance, and the person issuing it has to record details of high-risk work on the Electricity & Gas High-risk Database within a set number of working days, as set out on WorkSafe's page.
For a gasfitter, this means every callout, every appliance install, every hot water or cooktop swap, every LPG bottle changeover that touches the gas line, carries its own paper trail: pressure test results, the certificate itself, and the database entry where one applies. Missing a certificate, or filing it late, is not an admin slip, it is a compliance requirement that sits directly on the licence.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How can an AI agent help you carry these duties without it becoming another job after hours?
An AI agent, software that does a job the way you would, with your prices, wording and rules, can hold the record of every pressure test, every certificate issued and every safety check carried out, and chase the paperwork before a job is marked finished, instead of you trying to remember it at the end of a long week.
The real cost of these duties is rarely the gas work itself, it is the record keeping that sits around it: the certificate that has to be written up, the database entry that has to be lodged, the safety check that has to be logged so you can show what was done if WorkSafe or a customer ever asks. Doing that from memory, after the ute is packed up, is how a certificate gets issued late or not at all.
A data first approach starts from your own job data, what gasfitting work was actually carried out, on which appliance, which gas line, which property, rather than from a general checklist built for every trade. An AI agent built around that data can be set to flag a job as incomplete until the certificate and pressure test record are attached, and can hold a running record for the business of what was checked and when. That turns a legal duty into something you can show, not just something you remember doing.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 - explains the PCBU and officer duties, including due diligence.
- Safe use of machinery - sets out the primary duty of care, managing risk, and worker engagement.
- What events need to be notified - covers notifiable events, including gas or steam escaping, and what a PCBU must do.
- Gas (Safety and Measurement) Regulations 2010 - the regulations covering the safety of gas installations, fittings and appliances.
- Getting gas work done - covers Gas Safety Certificates, Certificates of Compliance and the high-risk database.
- Design and construction of gas installations - covers the standards gas installations must be designed and built to.
- Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006 - covers licensing, registration and practising licences.
- Working at height in New Zealand - covers overlapping PCBU duties when working alongside other businesses.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching does not start with a checklist of legal duties, it starts with the owner's own job data: what work was carried out, on which appliances and gas lines, what was certified, and what was checked on site but never written down anywhere. Through the Trade Business Intelligence, Greg Allan looks at where the real gap sits, often not the gas work itself but the record of it, because “the job scan, you're going to go round and identify all the potential things” that a customer does not know to ask about. The how, building the checks and the records into the day to day of the business, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share.
