HERA is currently working on assessing the fire performance of a typical New Zealand light steel frame floor of a multi-storey building with the aim to provide input into the fire section of the resulting design guide. As the first part of the research, an overseas experimentally-tested floor slab has been investigated numerically by advanced…
Announced in the Budget on the 21st May was an item around the establishment of independent regional research institutes. The intent being that the Government would provide funding towards the establishment of a number of institutes to be located in regional areas and not in the three large centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The…
The HERA Annual General Meeting took place as part of last month’s Metals Week and the members of the 2015/16 HERA Executive were confirmed. The terms of elected members Peter Hutton, Sean Gledhill, David Moore, and John Frear ended with the AGM. Peter Hutton, David Moore and John Frear were re-nominated and willing to stand…
The late September announcement that Australian company Leighton Contractors has been appointed as preferred contractor for the pre-construction phase of Christchurch Hospital’s new acute services building, has local manufacturing industry members question if the tender process applied by the Christchurch District Health Board (CDHB) followed the Government Procurement Rules as required by law. Oct52015 An…
This month, we update you on our research themes of Heat Transfer and Materials/Fluids undertaken in the AGGAT programme. One of the Research Aims under Materials and Fluids is RA1-3 – Geothermal Fluid Scaling and Corrosion, led by AGGAT team member Dr. Sadiq Zarrouk (University of Auckland). The other theme of Heat Transfer has two Research…
The Sustainable Steel Council (SSC) was formed in 2009 to promote the use of steel as a sustainable building material to the various stakeholders within New Zealand’s building and property industries. Following the formation of Metals New Zealand (MNZ) in 2011, SSC supports the wider MNZ activity on the sustainability of metal products. Since 2011,…
HERA has been alerted to the fact that there is a list of AS/NZS obsolete standards posted on Standards New Zealand’s web site. Among them are some standards on aluminium and stainless steel – see their website for further details. Sep252015 Update shared by our General Manager Dr Stephen Hicks Access Standards NZ website to find out more…
Worksafe New Zealand is consulting on a proposed amendment to the Code of Practice HSNOCOP 24 Above Ground Stationary Tanks with Integral Secondary Containment. The Code applies to the design and installation of above ground stationary tanks with integral secondary containment. It provides a means of compliance with the requirements of Clause 3 of Schedule 9…
The annual ArchEng workshop continues to go from strength to strength, thanks to co-operation with industry associations such as HERA. A CCANZ initiative that began in 2011, it expanded this year to involve the timber and steel sectors. Now that all three major building materials, concrete, steel and timber, are involved, ArchEng is poised to…
An error has been found in HERA Report R4-103. This publication is no longer for sale. In the report, the equation given for finding the plastic neutral axis when it lies in the web is incorrect. In terms of an alternative guide, SCI Publication 355 provides the latest design guidance on beams with web openings. Sep182015…
The Aotea Event Centre was a well selected venue to the second Steel Innovations Conference during Metals Week held on the 1 – 4 September. First launched in 2013, the biannual Steel Innovations Conference provides a forum for structural engineers, steel industry representatives, academics and students to share the latest knowledge in the design and…
New Zealand’s structural steel fabricators are showing strong support for the industry’s recently launched quality assurance scheme – Steel Fabricator Certification (SFC) – an initiative designed to ensure safety of fabricated structural steelwork. One year on, the number of firms who have achieved SFC certification has doubled to 16, with a double-digit number of fabricators lining up…