Over the past few years, there has been a growing body of anecdotal reports by business about the availability and use of Non-Conforming Products (NCP) in the New Zealand market across many product groups, including steel. Background to building conformance issues The March 2016 MBIE and Commerce Commission announcement that some concrete reinforcing steel mesh supplied into the New…
Rules for evaluating the design resistance of headed stud connectors through-deck welded within steel decking are provided in NZS 3404.1, 13.3.2.2. Due to the pitch of the ribs in the deck, it is normally not possible to provide enough shear connectors to provide a resistance equivalent to the lesser of: the tensile resistance of the…
Our General Manager Structural Systems Dr Stephen Hicks and Finite Element Analyst Nandor Mago have published a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Constructional Steel Research. The paper investigates the fire performance of highly utilized and eccentrically loaded concrete filled composite columns with a slenderness greater than currently permitted for the simple calculation model in…
Dr Stephen Hicks has been working with Dr Farhad Aslani, Ryan Lloyd and Prof. Uy of the Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety at the University of New South Wales, together with Dr Won-Hee Kang of Western Sydney University, on design rules for the flexural stiffness of composite columns for the forthcoming standard AS/NZS 2327.…
No doubt many HERA News readers are aware that New Zealand structural steel designers have had access to the free Fabsec FBEAM® design software. With a total of 159 individual licenses issued in New Zealand, this is a widely-used software package that produces efficient steel designs. Last year, at least 6,000 tonnes of welded beams…
B.C.Update 176: Further Guidance Relating to Building Product Substitution Work by MBIE to assist BCAs concerned about inferior building products has highlighted ongoing issues relating to product substitution. In some cases, products substituted after building consent has been granted have been unauthorised, have no evidence of compliance with the relevant Building Code requirements, and invalidate…
The New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering and the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society co-hosted the Tenth Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering (PCEE 2015) in Sydney, Australia. The conference was held between 6 and 8 November 2015, and was very well-attended by a mixture of practitioners and researchers from around the world. The keynote presenters at…
Following the establishment of the New Zealand National Group of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE), Structural Systems General Manager Dr Stephen Hicks attended the IABSE Conference in Geneva in September 2015. The conference objective was ‘Providing Solutions to Global Challenges’, which was underpinned by following global themes: Climate Change and the…
According to EN 1090-2, steel components have to be identifiable and traceable throughout the whole production chain. The choice of identification method is not specified consistently in international rules and standards. In terms of durability and liability, markings should be resistant to particular fabrication processes such as sandblasting, hot-dip galvanizing or coating. The methods are…
As a past reviewer, Dr Stephen Hicks was invited to author a paper for the flagship journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Civil Engineering. Following its recent publication, details of the paper are given below. Eurocodes – Overcoming the Barriers to Global Adoption, by Dr Stephen Hicks In 2010 the Eurocodes replaced the equivalent…
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…
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,…