shoulong-dong-heerf

R&D on expert design tool now complete via Scholarship Recipient Shoulong Dong

After three years of support, HERA Foundation is pleased to report the close out of Scholarship Recipient Shoulong Dong’s doctoral project. Shoulong’s R&D was focused on the development of an online engineering framework to aid engineers and researchers to carry out preliminary design exercises and performance evaluation. Developing an Expert Design Tool (EDT) as part…

consultancy

Notice – Welding consumable levy increase due to come into effect 1 February 2019

We’re pleased to announce that the Heavy Engineering Research Levy Notice 2018 has now been published and listed on the legislation.govt.nz website. This means a levy increase from 5c to 10c per kilogram of welding consumables is due to come into effect on 1 February 2019. We want to thank everyone who responded to our…

rsic-infrastructure

Update – Establishing new brittle fracture provisions for the Australasian steel structure standards

In order to ensure in-service safety of steel structures, design engineers need to select steel grades that will remain ductile under the imposed conditions that include in-service loadings, fabrication induced conditions, seismic actions and service temperatures. To achieve this, we’ve developed a new procedure to select steel grades manufactured to Australian and New Zealand standards…

dhconstruction-audit

HERA’s qualification, training and certification services successfully achieve the highest standards in a recent IIW audit

In December last year, our qualification, training and certification services underwent an external audit by expert assessors from the International Institute of Welding (IIW). Attended by IIW’s Mr Henk Bodt from Netherlands and Mr Shoichi Nomura of Japan, these auditors assessed our training facilities. They also visited our member D&H Steel Construction, who were the first…

mbie-report-2018

Benchmarking New Zealand’s performance in innovation and R&D

New Zealand’s R&D and innovation performance – can we do better? The answer is yes! NZ’s expenditure on R&D is benchmarking alarmingly low. This is the key takeaway from MBIE’s recently released 2018 Research, Science and Innovation System Performance Report.   But why does this matter? According to the OECD and Treasury, low R&D investment…

bc-update

Notice –B1/VM1 Amendment 17 and B2/AS1 Amendment 10 published

Back in August we called for comments from our members on MBIE’s proposed changes to B1/VM1 and B2/AS1. Three months later – we’re pleased to report these amendments have now been published. Over the last 9 months, HERA have worked closely with SCNZ and MBIE to exploit the significant investment that has been made in…

kupe-grayson

Flashback project: pipe racks for Kupe Gas Field – Grayson Engineering

Pipe racks for Kupe Gas Field Client: Robert Stone Duration: October 2007 – August 2008 Location: Taranaki, New Zealand Project value: NZD $6 million   Grayson Engineering successfully fabricated one of the largest modular construction projects at the time – working cost effectively within a tight program schedule and to stringent quality assurance and weld…

lab-tour

Emerging innovation cluster opportunities in automation and defence

This month our CEO Troy Coyle and General Manager Welding Centre Michail Karpenko spearheaded a visit with five of our member companies to the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Facility for Intelligent Fabrication (FIF) in Australia.  This was part of our efforts to respond to member feedback which has called for greater support to take advantage…

holmes-lim-feeney

Cost effective fire solution presentation arms industry with valuable knowledge

At the beginning of the month, HERA was honoured to sponsor a presentation on cost effective fire solutions for steel structures in collaboration with the Auckland Structural Group. We’ve found it’s a growing area of interest to many of our members and to the structural engineering fraternity. Particularly as it’s been captured in the new…