Project Manager – Assurance Services
No two building products are the same, and neither is the path to compliance. Phil Haslam helps clients to find the right one for them.
Phil Haslam works in the Assurance Services team as a Project Manager, but his job title is one of convenience – chosen because nothing else fits.
Phil manages Appraisals and CodeMark certification across a broad range of building products – plasterboard, cladding systems, wall and roof underlays, windows, and flashing tapes. Rather than project-managing in the conventional sense, he’s hands-on throughout: liaising with clients, coordinating with BRANZ’s fire, structural, and materials testing experts, and writing the Appraisals and CodeMarks.
Phil's particular strength is complex products – the ones with multiple building code clauses to satisfy, where the compliance pathway isn't obvious. His clients are a mix of new suppliers entering the New Zealand market and existing customers needing to demonstrate ongoing compliance. Either way, he tailors his approach. “Other labs might just go, well, these are the test results. We work with clients to understand what they’re trying to achieve and draw on BRANZ's full range of expertise to build the right solution for them.”
Balancing these demands requires Phil to know a little bit about everything, so he’s a generalist by design. “An organisation like BRANZ is full of specialists with advanced knowledge in their area. I can kind of pick up anything that comes through the door.”
His training began early. As a child, he watched builders at work across the road from his primary school. He remembers thinking: “So that's how you make a house – that's what's underneath all the exterior claddings and roofs – that's how it goes together.” His father was in the building industry, so he suspects there's “probably a bit of genetics involved, too.”
He holds a Bachelor of Building Science and a Bachelor of Architecture from Victoria University of Wellington, and worked in London as a building surveyor, covering Victorian houses to modern multistorey blocks. He also likes to do a bit of building renovation in his spare time, having renovated an old railway cottage. All of it – the childhood fascination, the study, the surveying, the hands-on renovation – shapes how he works today.
“How buildings fit together has fascinated me since childhood. Compliance is the same puzzle. My job is to make all the pieces fit."
Qualifications
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BArch, Victoria University of Wellington
- BBSc (Building Science), Victoria University of Wellington