Officials from International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) are visiting the Christchurch City Council today to check its progress on processing building consents.
IANZ removed the council's accreditation to issue consents last year because of a raft of rule breaches.
IANZ staff will be at the council for up to five days checking whether the problems it asked the council to work on in July have been fixed.
Chief executive Llew Richards said if the council got a clean bill of health, the ball would start rolling on returning its accreditation.
"That involves a review of the final report by a team of technical experts," he said.
"They would then recommend to the chair of our accreditation advisory committee that accreditation be granted and then he would give a formal recommendation to me to grant accreditation."
The process could take up to two weeks, Mr Richards said.
Councils require accreditation to register as consenting authorities.
The Christchurch council has been allowed to continue granting consents thanks to a special Government dispensation.