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…
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…
There is an increasing dialogue out in the market place about non-standard products being sold into the building and construction industry in NZ. The alleged numbers being reported are significant and almost somewhat unbelievable. But if they are anywhere near reality, we do need to be taking some form of action otherwise ‘Standards creep’ will…
As the new design standard for composite construction AS/NZS 2327 nears completion, consideration is being paid to what software tools will be needed by designers. Our General Manager Structural Systems Dr Stephen Hicks has encouraged Arup’s software house Oasys to implement the new AS/NZS 2327 within their Compos programme, which enables users to design composite beams…
More than 80 professionals attended the seminars jointly-organised by the NZ Welding Centre and SCNZ in March. The seminars were held in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. The seminars provided a comprehensive insight into normative requirements of the existing NZS 3404.1 and AS/NZS 1554 standard framework and included an overview of the Steel Fabricator…
The New Zealand heavy metals-engineering industry had an outstanding year of growth. The 12 monthly rolling total for heavy steel usage to the end of September stood at 151,000 tonnes p.a., while a year earlier it was 130,000 tonnes p.a., an increase of close to 16%. However, the fact remains that the industry is still…
New consumer protection regulations for building work costing $30,000 and over are expected to take effect from 1 January 2015. Acting Chief Executive of Standards New Zealand Michelle Wessing said the New Zealand standard 3902 Housing, alterations and small buildings contract will help meet the new regulations and makes the building process smoother and easier…