and partly due to the Building Act 2004. In particular, section 14E of the Building Act provides: 14E Responsibilities of builder (1) In subsection (2), builder means any person who carries out building work, whether in trade or not. (2) A builder is responsible for— (a) ensuring that the building work complies with the building consent and the plans and specifications to which the building consent relates: (b) ensuring that building work not covered by a building consent complies with the building code. (3) A licensed building practitioner who carries out or supervises restricted building work is responsible for— (a) ensuring that the restricted building work is carried out or supervised in accordance with the requirements of this Act; and (b) ensuring that he or she is licensed in a class for carrying out or supervising that restricted building work. Was the duty excluded by contract? However, the parties' relations were primarily governed by the contract. If the builders had excluded a duty of care in the contract, it would not have owed any such duty. The judge found that the contract did not exclude the duty including for the following reasons: • as a large and sophisticated commercial entity, Hawkins could have negotiated express exclusion of tortious liability but chose not to. Instead, it entered a standard form construction contract, with a modest suite of special conditions; • the fact that the architect assumed either exclusive or primary responsibility for Code compliance, did not show that the builder owed no duty of care; • other conditions in the contract emphasised Hawkins' responsibility as a builder. For example, it was required to ensure its workmanship complied with "good trade practice", it was responsible for the correctness of the works even if seen or inspected by a clerks of work or inspector and it was required to provide all necessary supervision of the works; and • the fact that Hawkins was not liable for design (there was an exclusion of design liability), left room for Hawkins to be liable in tort in relation to construction. In arguing that it did not owe any duty of care in tort, Hawkins had relied on a Court of Appeal case of Rolls-Royce New Zealand Ltd v Carter Holt Harvey Ltd [2005] 1 NZLR 324. In that case, Carter Holt and Rolls-Royce were at the top and bottom of a chain of contracts, respectively; each had a contract with Electricity Corporation of New Zealand Ltd (ECNZ), but not with each other. The Court of Appeal found that the contractual structure, and the fact that there was no contract between Rolls-Royce and Carter Holt, showed that they did not intend that any duties of care would be owed between them.