After a disaster, many people are faced with damage to their properties, and a need to rebuild their homes. In Christchurch a significant number of people will be rebuilding their homes or building new homes on recently purchased land. There are many ways in which a person can approach a building project including:

• employ a volume builder, architect, builder or project manager to manage the whole building process (design through to completion) or substantial parts of the project;
• decide to self-manage the building project stages whilst employing different professionals for the different stages of the building;
• if they are particularly skilled, with the correct qualifications, such as being a Licensed Building Practitioner, they could manage and build the property themselves.
• choose to undertake the work themselves through applying for an Owner-Builder exemption. This bulletin focusses on those people who choose to self-manage the building project stages whilst employing different professionals for the different stages of the building. For this report, these people are termed “self-managing rebuilding owners”. The bulletin draws on lessons from five years of research tracking the rebuilding of Marysville and Kinglake in Victoria following the bush-fires of February 2009.