By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why doesn't New Zealand have a specific licence for stonemasons?
There is no licence class for stonemasons under New Zealand's Licensed Building Practitioners (LBP) scheme, so a stonemasonry business is not required to hold a trade licence to cut, polish or install stone. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has looked at bringing stonemasonry into the LBP scheme, because stone cladding on a building can involve work that would otherwise sit close to licensed trades, but no stonemasonry licence class currently exists.
A Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment discussion document on the Licensed Building Practitioners scheme notes that stonemasonry is an established part of the construction industry, covering the sourcing, cutting and shaping of natural stone for uses such as cladding on a building, but that it sits outside every existing licensing class. The same document points to a gap for customers: if a job goes wrong, a customer generally cannot complain about a stonemason's work through the Building Practitioners Board unless that stonemason also happens to hold an LBP licence in a different class, such as bricklaying or blocklaying.
What do you need to register to run a stonemasonry business in New Zealand?
You do not need to register your stonemasonry business with a government agency to start trading as a sole trader in New Zealand. According to Business.govt.nz, you only need to tell Inland Revenue you have started working for yourself, then check which certificates, permits or trade qualifications your particular jobs need. This question usually comes up early, when a stonemason is still working solo or about to take on a first offsider, rather than later once the business has an office running its own compliance.
For most one or two person stonemasonry businesses that's the whole of it: an IRD number, a system for invoicing the kitchen companies and builders who send through template, benchtop and slab work, and GST registration once your turnover reaches the point Inland Revenue sets. Business.govt.nz is clear that the certificates and licences that do apply are trade specific, not blanket, so a stonemason working from a workshop doing engineered stone fabrication, cladding or restoration each needs to check their own list rather than assume one registration covers it all.
What safety obligations apply to the dust from cutting, polishing and fabrication?
Cutting, polishing and fabricating stone, whether it's engineered stone benchtops or natural sandstone cladding, creates respirable crystalline silica (RCS) dust, and WorkSafe New Zealand treats that as a workplace health hazard your business must actively manage, not just tolerate as part of the job.
WorkSafe's guidance on silica dust in the workplace sets out that as the PCBU, the person conducting a business or undertaking, you must, so far as is reasonably practicable, monitor your workers' health where their exposure to RCS dust warrants it, and monitor the conditions in your workshop itself, around the CNC saw, the polishing bay and the template room, to confirm whether dust levels are within safe limits and whether your controls are actually working. That applies whether the dust is coming off natural stone or engineered stone.
When does a stonemason's work cross into Restricted Building Work?
Some stonemasonry work, particularly fixing stone cladding to the structure of a building, can sit inside Restricted Building Work (RBW) under the Building Act 2004, even though there is no stonemasonry licence class to cover it, which means part of the job may still need sign off from a Licensed Building Practitioner in a related class.
The Licensed Building Practitioners Board's own page on construction stonemasonry and the LBP scheme points out that aspects of stonemasonry work can involve Restricted Building Work, but because no stonemasonry licence class exists, that work has not been regulated the same way bricklaying or blocklaying is. Where a job does involve RBW, such as structural cladding tied into a building's weathertightness, Building.govt.nz is clear that an LBP must design or carry out that work, and the LBP classes that exist cover carpenters, roofers, brick and blocklayers, external plasterers, designers, and site and foundation specialists, not stonemasons as their own class. In practice that often means a stonemason doing a cladding or structural install works alongside, or as a subbie to, an LBP for that part of the job, rather than holding the licence themselves.
What does this mean for your records and your margins?
The real risk in all this is not the licence question, it's whether your business can show, job by job, that you registered correctly, kept your dust monitoring records and knew which jobs needed an LBP, because that's what a customer, a builder or WorkSafe will actually ask to see, and that's a record problem, not a memory problem.
A data first view of the business starts by looking at what each job actually was, a benchtop template and install, a cladding job, a restoration or a memorial, because that's the detail that decides whether GST, dust monitoring or an LBP sign off applies, and relying on memory at return time is usually where the gaps show up. AI agents, software that does a job the way you would, with your prices, wording and rules, can hold that job type against every quote and invoice from the start, flag the cladding and structural jobs that may need an LBP, and keep a running record of dust monitoring dates instead of leaving it to whoever remembers. That's a different AI agent doing the flagging than the one handling your invoicing, but both start from the same job data, which is what a data first approach to this paperwork actually means. Greg coaches stonemasons across New Zealand and Australia online, starting from your own job and quoting data, so whether your workshop is in New Zealand or somewhere else doesn't change how that coaching works.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Licensed Building Practitioners scheme discussion document from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, covering why stonemasonry sits outside the LBP licensing classes and the gap in consumer complaints.
- Construction stonemasonry as part of the LBP scheme from the LBP scheme, covering how some stonemasonry work can involve Restricted Building Work.
- Becoming a sole trader from Business.govt.nz, covering registering with Inland Revenue and checking which certificates or licences your trade needs.
- Silica dust in the workplace from WorkSafe New Zealand, covering duties to monitor dust exposure and workers' health.
- Use licensed people for restricted building work from Building.govt.nz, covering when an LBP must design or carry out part of a job.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching doesn't start with the licence question, it starts with your own quoting and job data: what each job was actually priced as, whether it was flagged as cladding, restoration, a benchtop install or a memorial, and whether that flag matched what was actually built on site. Often the real problem isn't a missing registration, it's that the office has no reliable way of knowing which jobs carry extra compliance weight until it's too late to fix cheaply. Greg Allan built Data First Coaching on the Trade Business Intelligence, which reads a stonemason's own numbers alongside years of coaching trade businesses. The how of setting that up is worked through inside the Academy, with other members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins, and the Academy looks for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
